


i never get to hold you (as long as i want to)

by nebulastucky



Series: vision [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ambassador Sokka (Avatar), Birthday Sex, Established Relationship, Firelord Zuko (Avatar), M/M, Matchmaking, Meddling, Meeting the Parents, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Secret Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Southern Water Tribe, Stargazing, Swordfighting, Title from a Carly Rae Jepsen Song, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and also regular non-birthday sex, genuinely i have cavities after writing this, nsfw from chapter 3 !!!!, ok technically zuko HAS already met the parents but not in a Meeting The Parents Trope way, only the match is already made, technically? theyre on a boat for a lot of it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:01:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29331993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulastucky/pseuds/nebulastucky
Summary: “I thought maybe we could keep it between us for a bit,” Sokka says, close enough that Zuko feels the words on the skin of his throat. “If other people know, then it’s not just you and me anymore. I’d like to be just you and me for a while.”“Just you and me?” Zuko stares at Sokka, and Sokka stares right back, like there’s nothing else in the world worth looking at.“If you want that,” Sokka says, barely a whisper, and Zuko wants that. Zuko wants that more than anything."Yeah," he breathes. "You and me."Or: no one knows Zuko and Sokka are together, but everyone thinks they should be.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: vision [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904806
Comments: 89
Kudos: 560
Collections: Zukka Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is set immediately after the events of isn't this the vision that you wanted! i tried my best to make this fic as stand-alone as possible, so you don't have to read the first part to know what's going on, but it does enhance the experience.
> 
> huge thank you to the incredible ragdollnetic on tumblr for providing [art](https://ragdollnetic.tumblr.com/post/643397537979678720/i-never-get-to-hold-you-as-long-as-i-want-to/) for this fic, and to haley for beta work and saint-like patience. special shoutout also to ella for keeping me sane the last few months, and oisín for their overwhelming enthusiasm for this fic! i love you! i miss you!
> 
> title from never get to hold you by carly rae jepsen

A throat clears somewhere behind them. Zuko ignores it. There is nothing in the world that could distract him right now.

“Zuko,” Sokka says against his lips. Zuko hums, and uses the arm he has hooked around the back of Sokka’s neck to pull him closer, closer, closer, never close enough. No such thing as close enough.

 _“Zuko,”_ Sokka says again. “We have company.”

Sokka pulls away, and for the second before he turns, Zuko looks at him. His eyes are wide and his lips are shiny and kiss-swollen, and he has never looked more beautiful.

Zuko tears his eyes away and whips around to see his uncle standing on the dock. He feels exposed all of a sudden, and supposes he has good reason to.

“I see you took my advice,” Iroh grins up at him. “Congratulations, Nephew.”

Sokka whispers in his ear, “Advice?”

The feeling of Sokka’s breath on his skin, a ghost at the shell of his ear and along his neck, makes every hair on Zuko’s body stand on end. He doesn’t have time to waste here.

“I’m leaving, Uncle,” he says. “I’m going to the South Pole.”

“Yes,” Iroh laughs, “I thought you might be.”

“I know it’s short noti- what? What are you talking about? I didn’t know I was doing this until five minutes ago!”

“I have my ways, Nephew. Your bags are already packed and loaded. Everything is taken care of.”

Zuko wrestles out of Sokka’s grasp. He flies down the gangplank to stand in front of his uncle. 

“How did you know?” Zuko asks around a sudden lump in his throat. “What if I hadn’t said yes? What if -”

Iroh puts a hand on his shoulder. “I took a risk. So did you.”

Zuko lets himself be pulled into his uncle’s arms, collapsing against him like a ragdoll. He whispers, into the space behind him, “Thank you, Uncle.”

Iroh pushes him away, holds him by both shoulders.

“I will lead in your absence,” he says, emphatic and sure, “and I will try my best to see your changes made. Nothing will be final until your return, of course, but I hope I can do your vision for this nation the justice it deserves.”

He pushes Zuko back toward the boat. Toward Sokka.

“Go, Zuko,” he says. “Go and be young.”

Zuko nods, that lump in his throat almost doubling in size, and waits for Iroh to turn and start making his way back to the palace before heading back up the gangplank. At the top, he hears his uncle’s voice again.

“And gentlemen,” he says, wry and smiling, “I suggest you find yourselves a less _compromising_ position before Katara arrives.”

Zuko’s face turns an alarming shade of pink. Sokka offers a hand to help him back up onto the ship, and he can’t bring himself to take it. He can barely look Sokka in the eye, even with his uncle quickly becoming no more than a vague shape in the distance.

“I can’t believe that just happened,” Zuko groans. “I’m going to hide below deck until we get to the South Pole so I don’t kiss you in front of Katara and get the entire ocean thrown at me.”

Part of him really means it, too, because the urge to touch Sokka was overwhelming before, but _now_ \- now Zuko doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop himself. Now that he’s had a taste, he’s insatiable.

“Hey,” Sokka says, grabbing his hand. Zuko looks at him, and his eyes are at once soft and sharp, kind and devilish. “I _want_ you to kiss me.”

His words have an edge to them, a shining silver blade Zuko wants to throw himself onto. He lets gravity pull him closer to Sokka - no use resisting now, he thinks - and the syrup-slow grin on his lips that makes him want to give Sokka exactly what he wants. Sokka’s breath skates across his bottom lip, and then -

“Zuko!”

Katara’s voice is far away but somehow even louder than the ship’s engines. Sokka jerks away at the sound of his sister’s cry, rushing to lean over the rail at the bow of the ship. He points, and Zuko spots her too, running like the wind down the path from the palace to the docks.

When she’s close enough, Zuko hears her shout, “You didn’t tell me!”

At the docks, she doesn’t use the gangplank, instead electing to bend herself a bridge of ice that stretches over Sokka and Zuko and drops her onto the deck behind them. With a bare split-second to react, Sokka pulls Zuko out from under the arch of it, and saves him from drowning as Katara turns it to water once again. It splashes up his legs, and Zuko glares at her.

“You didn’t tell me,” she says, and punches his arm. It reminds him so vividly of Toph that for a fleeting moment, he considers demanding the captain take the long way to the South Pole to pick her up along the way somewhere.

“Hey, watch it,” Sokka says, pulling Zuko out of her reach. “He’s still the Firelord, he can still throw you in the dungeons with the traitors and power-mad fathers.”

Katara ignores him, and levels Zuko with a stare. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Pulled tight against Sokka’s chest, a spike of fear jabs at Zuko. He gulps. “Tell you what?”

“That you’re coming with us, stupid,” she says, and his blood pressure drops back to normal. “I had to hear it from your uncle, not five minutes ago!”

“It’s been a weird morning,” Zuko says, setting himself free from Sokka’s arm around him. “Must’ve slipped my mind.”

“It was kind of a last minute thing,” Sokka tells her, and Zuko looks at him. That’s the truth, sure, but it’s not the whole truth. Maybe because there _isn’t_ a whole truth, not yet. Not until they talk about all of this and what it means. If it means anything at all.

“Did, um -” Zuko starts, hesitant and wishing he still had Sokka shielding him, “did Uncle tell you anything else?”

“Yeah,” Katara says. She eyes him carefully, like she can see the nervous knot coiling in his gut.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is laced with suspicion, and she stares right into his eyes as she continues, almost testing him, “He said he’s taking over Firelord duties until you’re back, and he wishes us a safe journey.”

The knot in Zuko’s stomach unravels. That means he didn’t tell her what he saw. The knot tightens again a moment later, though, as Zuko realises that it also means _she doesn’t know._

And if Katara doesn’t know, then they either have to tell her, or keep it a secret.

There's not a lot of room on a ship like this for a secret like that.

* * *

When Katara disappears into the belly of the ship to make sure everything in the cargo hold is where it should be, Sokka pulls Zuko into an unoccupied room. The door closes loudly behind him.

Looking around, Zuko realises abruptly that this is one of the - at most three, Zuko thinks, though with his uncle involved knowing what he knows, he doesn’t imagine it’s that many - rooms not designated to crew. There’s space for meditation, a small private washroom, a tea table in the corner, and one wide bed pressed into the centre of one wall. 

The other rooms could all be identical, Zuko supposes, but this has his uncle’s fingerprints all over it. It must be meant for him. 

Sokka glances around, losing the serious look on his face for a moment. “I didn’t know there were single rooms on this ship.”

Zuko flushes red, and he drops his gaze to the floor. “I think it’s just the one.”

“We could -” Sokka starts, and something hopeful and light dies in Zuko’s chest as he cuts himself off. “We can figure that out later.”

Zuko looks at him then, takes in the soft smile and the loose strands of hair he must’ve pulled free earlier, and feels himself flush deeper. He’s self-conscious, just for a second, until he remembers Sokka’s words from just before Katara came yelling, and the feeling disappears into thin air.

Sokka looks right back at him, and suddenly he’s much closer than he was a moment ago. Zuko presses his back against the door, and Sokka seems to tower over him.

“Hey,” Sokka says. He leans closer, laying a hand on the door to hold his weight.

“Hey.” Zuko’s voice is bolder than he expects. Sokka’s eyes drop down to his mouth, and Zuko wants to kiss him, more than he’s ever wanted to kiss anyone.

He remembers, with a rush of satisfaction, that he _can._

He grabs Sokka by the front of his tunic and pulls him in, sealing their mouths together. A soft sound escapes Sokka’s mouth as Zuko’s hand releases the fabric and smooths across his chest. 

Sokka changes the angle and kisses him deeper, his free hand coming up to hold Zuko’s face, and Zuko grips him at the waist, tugging him closer and closer until there’s nothing between them but their clothes, and -

Sokka pulls away. He presses his forehead to Zuko’s, his eyes still closed, and his chest heaves under Zuko’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko whispers. Sokka’s head tips back so he can look at him.

“What? Oh - no, not _that_ ,” Sokka says. “Never _that_ , Zuko.”

A thrill runs through Zuko at the sound of his name on Sokka’s lips. It’s always different when he says it, but especially now. Especially like this, when Zuko can feel the rapid pace of his heartbeat jump even higher when he says it.

“It’s just -” Sokka says. “That’s not why I dragged you in here.”

Zuko frowns at him.

“Not that I don’t want to get back to that,” Sokka amends, “I just - should we talk? About this?”

“I don’t know how much there is to say,” Zuko says, trying hard not to deflate. “Unless you don’t want -”

 _“No,”_ Sokka shushes him with a kiss, a single press of lips to quiet his worries. “I want this. I _like_ you, Zuko.”

Zuko smiles at him, big and wide and easier than breathing. “I like you too, Sokka.”

Sokka steps away from him then, taking his hands and pulling him with him further into the room. He stops at the corner of the bed, leaning against the post holding up one corner of a canopy, and drapes Zuko’s hands around his neck.

“Do you want to tell Katara or should I?” Zuko asks. Sokka’s hands drift to his hips, and settle, fingers interlaced, at the small of his back.

“I thought maybe we could keep it between us for a bit,” he says, close enough that Zuko feels the words on the skin of his throat. “If other people know, then it’s not just you and me anymore. I’d like to be just you and me for a while.”

“Just you and me?” Zuko stares at Sokka, and Sokka stares right back, like there’s nothing else in the world worth looking at.

“If you want that,” Sokka says, barely a whisper, and Zuko wants that. Zuko wants that more than anything.

"Yeah," he breathes. "You and me."

"You and me and all the crew that saw us upstairs." Sokka laughs at his own joke, and it’s infectious. His shoulders shake with it, the movement flowing through his arms down to his hands on Zuko’s back, drawing him closer.

Zuko goes, buries his face in Sokka’s neck as he laughs along with him, and it’s so easy. It’s the easiest thing in the world to let Sokka hold him, to let himself laugh against his chest, to let himself breathe in the scent of him and not feel any shame.

The whole room rumbles as the main engine of the ship roars to life somewhere below them. Sokka jumps in surprise, his hands moving from Zuko’s back to grip the bedpost behind him. Zuko lets his arms drop from their place around Sokka’s neck, and barks a single loud laugh at him. 

Pink tinges Sokka’s cheeks. “Shut up.”

“What did you think was going to happen when we started moving?”

“I don’t know! It just caught me off guard.”

“Some Plan Guy you are,” Zuko teases, and Sokka glares at him. Zuko glares back at him, and then Sokka’s turns into a pout, and that just isn’t fair. 

“Don’t do that,” Zuko warns. “Stop it.”

“Stop what? This is just my face.”

Zuko steps back into Sokka’s space. “Don’t _pout_ at me, pretty boy.”

Sokka stops pouting. “You think I’m pretty?”

“Yes, I do,” Zuko says, leaning in further. Sokka tilts his head to one side, a smirk replacing that jutted bottom lip, and -

The door wrenches loudly open, and Zuko is on the other side of the room before it’s even halfway there. He looks over from his spot against the wall and Sokka is gaping at him, awe tracing the _o_ of his open mouth.

Katara stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips and says, “I didn’t know there were single rooms on this ship.”

Sokka gasps. “That’s what I said!”

“Do you want this one, Zuko?” Katara asks. “It sort of looks like it’s meant for you.”

Zuko shrugs. “I guess, but I don’t -”

“Yes,” Sokka interrupts, and looks at him with the wide eyes of a man on a very unsubtle mission. “He means yes, he’ll take the _private room_ away from _everyone else_.”

“Then I guess you’re with me, Sokka,” Katara says brightly, and saunters out of the room. Zuko hears the metallic scrape of another door opening down the hall.

Sokka looks at him and says, his quiet voice a flat accusation, “You are _bad_ at this.”

“I’ve never done this before!” Zuko hisses.

Sokka rolls his eyes and pushes off from the bedpost. He crosses the room to stand in front of Zuko.

He says, “Don’t think with your brain so much next time,” and kisses him. 

It’s passionate and eager and Zuko is breathless, breathless, breathless, and then it’s over and Sokka is following Katara out of the room. He glances over his shoulder in the doorway, and Zuko thinks he sees him wink.

Zuko falls back against the wall, heart hammering in his chest and breath still shallow, and wonders what the hell he’s gotten himself into.

* * *

Zuko realises, halfway through the afternoon, that none of this means he has to pretend not to like Sokka, he just has to act like he doesn’t know Sokka likes him right back - but only when Katara’s around. 

And from there, the games begin.

They’re finishing up a late lunch when Zuko stands and stretches, his arms reaching high over his head and his body twisting just enough that the hem of his tunic exposes a sliver of skin, and pretends to be oblivious to Sokka’s eyes on him. Katara is watching, too, but not in a way that leaves his skin feeling scorched like Sokka’s heavy gaze does.

“I’m going down to cargo to see what Uncle packed me,” Zuko says. “I want to make sure we don’t have to turn back because he forgot I’d need furs in the South Pole.”

Sokka is on his feet as soon as the word _cargo_ leaves his mouth. 

“I’ll come with you,” he says, and Zuko almost rolls his eyes. “In case, you know, you drop something and there’s no one around to laugh at you.”

“And if _you_ drop something?”

“I wouldn’t,” Sokka says, plastering on that easy grin that makes Zuko want to eat him whole. “I’m big and strong.”

Zuko does roll his eyes then, and shoves him toward the door. Sokka nearly trips, and Zuko grabs him by the back of his tunic to save him.

“I was _fine -_ ”

“You were about to break your face on the floor, Sokka,” Zuko huffs, “and I did not come on this trip to stare at your broken face all day.”

“Is that your plan? You’re going to stare at my face the whole time? I don’t know, Zuko, you need to sleep at _some_ p-” Sokka takes a turn down the hall, and Zuko grabs another handful of fabric to stop him.

“That’s the wrong way,” he says. “Cargo’s this way.”

“No, it’s _this_ way,” Sokka insists, and when he looks at Zuko, his eyebrows are raised in a mischievous wish - and _oh,_ how Zuko wants to grant it.

From inside the room, Katara heaves a long sigh. Zuko blinks, and she’s there in the doorway, arms crossed and a weary look on her face. “You two are useless. How are you running a country?”

“With great difficulty,” Sokka says. 

“You don’t run anything,” Zuko tells him. “You’re just there for decoration.”

“I do make the place look nice, though, don’t I?”

“Why do you think I protected your face?”

Katara sighs again, and points down the hall. “Cargo is that way.”

Zuko smacks Sokka on the arm and says, “Told you,” but still has to drag him the right direction. He can still hear Katara’s eyes rolling when they turn the corner at the end of the hall.

Sokka nearly falls again on the stairs down to the cargo hold, and Zuko only manages to catch him because he chooses that moment to look back over his shoulder at him. 

He braces Sokka with one hand on his chest and the other on his bicep, and when Sokka smirks down at him, he has to ask, “Are you doing this on purpose?”

Sokka takes Zuko’s hand from his arm and presses a kiss to the knuckles. Zuko blinks at him, because that’s all he has the presence of mind to do.

“Maybe,” Sokka says, low and sultry, “I just like your hands on me.”

Zuko chokes on a laugh, and his mind comes back to him. “You want to be _manhandled_?”

“That makes it sounds like I’d let just anyone do it,” Sokka says. “I want to be you-handled.”

“You’re an idiot,” Zuko says, but he climbs the single step between them and pulls Sokka down by the front of his shirt to kiss him once, sugar sweet and smiling.

When he breaks away, Sokka whispers, “You’re going to make me fall.”

“I’ll catch you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sokka says, and all Zuko can feel is the heat of Sokka’s breath on his lips and the way his own heart tries to leap out of his chest.

It’s intoxicating, this kind of closeness. It makes him dizzy, lightheaded, lose his balance - and he does, actually, nearly toppling to the floor but for Sokka’s grip on his hand, keeping him on his feet. Always saving him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do that on the stairs,” Sokka says.

Zuko, sure-footed again and at the end of the stairs already, tells him, “Quick thinking like that is exactly why I hired you.”

“And there I was thinking it was because I look good in red.”

The cargo hold is always bigger than Zuko expects. During the war, it would’ve been stocked with weapons and fuel and the occasional prisoner, but now it’s a maze of trunks and sacks and the strange shadows they cast. 

They don’t say anything as they pick separate paths through the luggage. Some of the trunks are stacked two or three or four high, and Zuko loses sight of Sokka on more than one occasion, but there’s a sort of intimacy in the quiet knowledge that he’s still there, that he’s not going anywhere.

The room is cast in an eerie blue by the light from the porthole windows. There are torches on the walls, unlit for now, and Zuko knows well the smoke they’ll emit once it’s too dark outside for the windows to do any good. The blue in the air makes everything seem cool and fantastical, bathed in an unreal dappling of light and colour the way only water can.

“What are we looking for?” Sokka asks. Zuko looks over at him, caught in a perfect shaft of light from a window, and can’t come up with an answer for a moment.

“Anything, I guess,” he says. “Anything that looks like it’s mine.”

Sokka looks down at himself, and Zuko thinks he can see the start of a bad joke in his smile.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Zuko tells him, “keep it to yourself.”

“As you wish, Your Highness,” Sokka says, and goes back to opening trunks at random.

For a second, Zuko balks at him, the audacity of it all. Then he realises that all these trunks look the same, and that’s as good a method as any.

They dig through trunks and bags for a while, mostly in silence. Occasionally Sokka will hold up some trinket from one of the crew’s bags and say something sarcastic, and Zuko will laugh and tell him to stop rooting through strangers’ belongings, and Sokka will tell him he’s doing the same thing only boring. It’s a comfortable little pattern, and Zuko would be happy to repeat it for hours.

It’s not particularly fast work, and they eventually run out of easy-access baggage and have to start moving things around. The light from the windows is fading, and Zuko knows he’ll have to light the torches soon, but for now he wants to wait as long as he can and revel in the secrecy of a dark room.

After moving four fruitless and heavy trunks that were stacked against the wall, Zuko sits on top of the last one to take a break. His hair is clinging to his forehead, his clothes are starting to feel unnecessarily many, and his arms protest at any sudden movement. He figures it’s what he gets for going straight into heavy lifting without warming up first.

There are more tall stacks of boxes on either side of this one, and Zuko tries not to be daunted by them as he rests his head against the side of one.

Sokka comes to stand in front of him, his face all intricate shadows and white smile, and says, “Who knew the crew had so much _stuff?_ ”

There’s a torch over his head, and Zuko lights it without looking away from Sokka, so he gets to see the exact moment his face comes into full illumination. He looks beautiful, because he always does.

Sokka smiles at him, charming and provocative, and says, “I bet you show off like that to all the boys.”

“No,” Zuko breathes, as Sokka settles into the space between his legs, “just one.”

“Just one?”

“He’s from the South Pole,” Zuko tells him, and now Sokka is inching closer, closer, not quite close enough. “Maybe you know him?”

“Maybe,” Sokka says, and kisses him like it’s nothing, like it’s everything, like it’s all the parts in between.

It starts innocently enough, and then Sokka’s hands find his thighs, thumbs rubbing circles into the fabric, and Zuko sighs into his mouth. Sokka swallows the sound of it, chases it, licks into Zuko’s mouth to see if he can find any more. Zuko thinks, wild and dangerous, that it would be all too easy to get addicted to a feeling like this.

He puts one hand on the side of the trunk where his head lay, bracing himself, as Sokka moves from his mouth to kiss along his jaw. Sokka’s lips brush the pulse point of his throat, and - 

The trunk at Zuko’s side is no longer there, but flying loudly across the cargo hold. It comes to a stop when it crashes into another stack of boxes and sends them spilling to the floor, and it’s only then that Zuko sees the scorch mark where his hand used to be.

“Did you just -” Sokka starts. “Did _I_ -”

“That’s never happened before,” Zuko says, and he can’t take his eyes off the mess he’s made. “I don’t know what - I’m usually so in control.”

Zuko looks at Sokka then, and part of him expects to see fear on his face, but he’s met with wide, awed eyes and a smug quirk to his mouth. He realises then that Sokka hasn’t moved a single inch away from him. His hands are even still on Zuko’s thighs, a detail Zuko has to work very hard not to focus on.

“Don’t,” he cautions. “Don’t go getting a big head. That was a one-time thing.”

Sokka huffs a short laugh. “Zuko, I kissed you, and you sent a hundred-pound trunk to the other side of the room. I don’t know how to take that if it’s not a compliment.”

“How about you take it as a warning? We’ve got about five minutes before Katara is breaking down the door to see which of us has been killed.”

Sokka laughs again, and Zuko can feel his resolve melting. 

“Five minutes is tons of time,” Sokka says. He’s leaning in again, his eyes half-lidded and flickering in the torchlight, and Zuko doesn’t think he has the willpower to deny him.

Zuko kisses him once, bruising and desperate and hoping Sokka understands that he doesn’t ever want to stop, and pushes him away.

He says, “I think some of that stuff on the floor is mine, help me drag it upstairs,” and Sokka just stares at him, his mouth hanging slightly open and restraint etched into every line of his face.

Zuko stands, forcing him back a couple of paces, and thinks he might burn under the intensity of Sokka’s eyes on him as he walks away.

Sokka finds his voice, finally, and says, scrambling to join him, “I think we’re probably lucky I can’t bend.”

* * *

When Zuko is finished unpacking - by himself; they learn quickly that Sokka being in the room doesn’t exactly do wonders for his productivity - and the day is done, he stares at the folds of the canopy over the bed, thinking.

The only thought in his head is that before this morning, he had never kissed Sokka, and now he’s not sure he’ll last the night without it.

It’s too easy, he thinks, to want Sokka and not be afraid of it. 

It’s too easy to last, he thinks.

It’s too easy not to.

He closes his eyes, and sleep comes without a struggle, and he thinks, _haven’t I earned a little bit of easy?_


	2. Chapter 2

In the middle of their second night at sea, when the moon is high and peeking through the porthole windows, someone sneaks into Zuko’s room.

Zuko doesn’t even hear him coming, doesn’t know he’s there until he’s _right there,_ sliding into the bed beside him. The dip of the mattress wakes him, and he freezes for a moment, wondering how an enemy could find him here on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

And then Sokka whispers, “Hey,” and Zuko starts to breathe again.

Zuko says, as Sokka shuffles over to him and wraps an arm around his waist, “Have you ever considered becoming an assassin?”

“Are you firing me?” Sokka pulls him closer, turning him onto his side. Their noses brush, and Zuko can feel Sokka’s breath on his lips for the second before Sokka kisses him.

Sokka’s hand flies from Zuko’s hip to cup his face, fingers curling along his jaw and nails grazing the sensitive skin just below his ear. Everything about it - the gentle way Sokka touches him, the tender pressure of lips, Sokka’s _hmm_ as Zuko’s hand settles at his waist - is divine, and oh-so careful.

They part, and Zuko asks, head spinning, “What are you doing in here?”

“I was cold,” Sokka says, and when Zuko laughs, he does too. “Why do you think? I wanted to see you.”

“It’s dark in here, you can’t see me.”

“Do you need it spelled out for you, Firelord?” Sokka says. The hair on Zuko’s neck stands up and his toes curl at the way Sokka says _Firelord,_ the way he makes it sound like _lover_. “I wanted to be near you. I wanted to hear your voice.”

Zuko’s breath catches in his throat. Sokka is about to be sorely disappointed, it seems, because Zuko has forgotten how to speak. Instead, he rolls out of Sokka’s embrace - and he’s right, it _is_ cold without him - and lights the obscene number of candles that live on the locker by his side of the bed.

 _His side._ There’s a lot of weight in that thought. Zuko hopes he’ll be strong enough to carry it.

Zuko rolls over again, into Sokka’s waiting arms, and just looks at him. His hair is still scraped back into its wolf tail, and the candles cast interesting shadows across his face, and his smile is soft and warmer than any Zuko has ever seen, and he’s beautiful. 

The whole room is coloured a haunting orange, the flickering light throwing impossible shapes against the walls, and Sokka’s voice sounds like gold as he says, “There you are.”

Zuko says nothing, just swallows, and tries not to stare at Sokka’s mouth.

“Is this okay?” Sokka asks, as his hand slides from Zuko’s jaw to his neck, delicate like a promise. “Me being here?”

 _I never want you anywhere else,_ Zuko thinks. He can’t bring himself to say it, true as it may be. It’s strange, he thinks, that there are still some things he can’t say. That some words are still too big, too much, too soon.

He settles for, “Yes,” a long exhale of a word, and presses his forehead to Sokka’s.

For a long time, the room stays perfect and silent, and Zuko wonders if he’s finally succeeded in sealing off a single moment to spend the rest of his days luxuriating in. This - the air filled with the gentle crash of waves against the hull of the ship and the sound of Sokka’s even breathing, their eyes closed and the whole sensory world boiled down to the bump of their noses against each other and the smell of soft, boyish skin - would be a good one.

One of the candles burns out with a quiet _hiss._ Zuko asks, “Do you think Katara noticed you sneaking out?”

“You barely noticed me sneaking _in,_ ” Sokka says. He presses a single kiss to Zuko’s cheek, just at the edge of his scar, and rearranges himself to rest his head on Zuko’s chest. 

Zuko, on his back now, curls his arm around Sokka’s body instinctively, his forefinger twirling patterns into his shoulder. Sokka hums, a comfortable little sound, and Zuko has to take a deep breath to stop himself from setting the sheets on fire. His heart stutters and screams in his chest, and he’s sure Sokka can hear it.

“Do you think,” Sokka muses, and Zuko can feel his voice in his ribs, “it would be more or less suspicious if I didn’t go back to mine and Katara’s room?”

“That depends,” Zuko says. “What’s your excuse if she calls you on it?”

“Easy. I’ll say I was seasick.”

Zuko laughs. “You practically grew up on a fishing boat, Sokka.”

“Which is why it makes sense for me to be out all night! I’m surprised and existential about it!”

Zuko laughs again, from somewhere deep inside him, and when he looks down, Sokka is grinning up at him. Zuko wonders if there will ever come a day when that smile doesn’t blind him.

He says, “Yeah, okay. You were seasick. And it gave you a personality crisis.”

“Exactly, I’m spiralling,” Sokka says, and he drops a kiss on the centre of Zuko’s chest, right where his ribs meet. “You get it.”

“I don’t know if Katara’s going to buy it.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Sokka explains. “It’s two against one.”

“I’m an accomplice now?”

Sokka sits up, balancing his weight on an elbow, and says, his face just inches from Zuko’s, “You don’t want to be on my team?”

Zuko looks at him, at the earnest softness in his eyes and the twin locks of escaped hair that frame his face, and he melts. He reaches up and tugs the elastic from Sokka’s hair. Running his fingers through long strands like silk, he says in a hushed voice, “I’m always on your team. As long as you want me.”

It’s not quite what he means to say, not quite what he _wants_ to say, but it’s close enough that he thinks he can trust Sokka to hear the words that don’t come out.

Sokka kisses him, slow and romantic and exploring. Zuko wants to live under his skin. There’s no rush to any of it. The depthless black of the sky outside the window is a reassuring constant, a promise of all the time in the world.

Sokka pulls away. He presses his lips once more to the corner of Zuko’s mouth, and says, “So you’ll lie to my sister for me?”

Zuko breathes, _“Yes,”_ because right now, with his body pliant and relaxed under Sokka’s touch, he thinks he’d agree to any damn thing under the sun. Sokka settles back down on his chest, tracing circles into the soft cloth of his sleep shirt.

They lie there in the quiet, trading stray thoughts and bad jokes and touches like velvet, for what could be hours or minutes. Zuko doesn’t want to know. 

Zuko starts to drift into sleep, his eyelids heavy and his skin warm everywhere it touches Sokka’s. He waves a lazy hand at the candles to put them out, and Sokka grabs it on its way back. He presses his lips to the palm, and Zuko goes boneless at the touch.

Sokka kisses one cheek, then the other, and whispers into Zuko’s good ear, “Sleep well, Your Highness.”

He slinks away into the dark, back to his own room, and Zuko’s bed feels empty and cold without him.

* * *

After rooting through the trunks and bags and boxes his uncle packed for him, Zuko discovers one trunk filled to the brim with documents and proposals that he’s been neglecting for weeks - okay, months - and a cheerful note to go with them.

_This should keep you busy, if nothing else._

So much for a spontaneous getaway. 

Katara and Sokka spend a lot of time talking about the Water Tribes. It’s by far the best use of their time, and Zuko could be productive, too, if it weren’t for the fact that they feel the need to have their discussions from opposite sides of whatever room Zuko is using to get his own work done.

Any time he tries to move to a new room for some peace and quiet, they follow him, never letting him out of their sight for more than a few minutes. 

He thinks - hopes - they won’t follow him into his room, but Sokka is there within a minute, flopping onto the bed he’d vacated barely twelve hours prior. Katara is still yammering when she comes in and drops down beside him.

It’s a long time spent trying to tune out their voices before Zuko realises that what Sokka and Katara are doing - talking loudly about the customs of their own people - isn’t _work_ for them. It takes even longer for him to realise that they don’t mean to work, and have no intention of letting Zuko work, either.

“Zuko,” Sokka says, hopping onto the tea table Zuko has been using as a desk, “come sit with us. You’re allowed to take a break, you know.”

Zuko looks up from his parchment to see Sokka smiling down at him with the radiance of the sun, and for a single heartbeat he forgets that Katara is in the room and almost kisses him. 

Sokka reaches over and cards his fingers through Zuko’s hair, parting the front like curtains. He says, as Zuko bites back the urge to sigh at the scrape of nails against his scalp, “You’ve got ink on your forehead.”

Zuko flushes bright pink. Pink becomes a deep crimson when Sokka wets his thumb on his tongue and rubs at Zuko’s skin, soft and rough all at once, his mouth curled into a concentrated frown. Sokka smiles at him again when he’s done, the light from the window gifting him a golden halo, and Zuko can barely breathe.

All the kisses and the touches and the affirmations pale in comparison to this, this sunshine moment of intimacy. 

This kind of thing, Zuko thinks, would still have happened before all of - before _now._ It’s a casual touch, an even more casual display of care and affection, and he knows that not even a week ago he would’ve had a thousand reasons at the ready to excuse it as anything other than romantic. A week ago, Zuko was a fool.

And then there’s a cough from the other side of the room, and the sun hides behind a cloud, and Zuko remembers, as the thrill of secrecy runs down his spine, that this is a risky business.

Katara, still on Zuko’s bed - something strange twists in his gut at the fact of her there on her own like an invasive species - and fluffing a pillow behind her, calls out, her voice beckoning and tempting in a very different way to Sokka’s, “Waste some time with us, Zuko.”

He wants to waste time. That’s _all_ he wants to do. 

Katara pats the space beside her, smoothing barely rumpled sheets with her palm. Zuko heaves a great and dramatic sigh and goes, letting the still-inked tip of his brush ruin the page he’s been staring at for longer than he cares to admit. Katara’s smile seems to go past her eyes.

Zuko takes his spot next to her, sitting up against the headboard, and indulges himself in watching Sokka strut back over and sprawl like a cat across the foot of the bed. He catches Zuko’s eye and holds it, and Zuko can tell from the twisted smirk on his lips that he’s holding back a wink for the sake of their company.

He wonders if Sokka knows just how many other things he’s been holding back, too.

Katara glances between them. He looks at her when she takes his hand, and for a moment he's transported back to a secluded hillside cut by a freshwater stream and a conversation that wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. He catches a glimmer of something nefarious in Katara's eye, and tries to remember the last time he noticed a look like that on her face.

“Sokka,” she says, without looking at her brother, “do you know anything about this boy Zuko has been trying to woo?”

Zuko nearly chokes. “Katara -”

Somehow, and Zuko doesn’t know which of the spirits he has to thank for it, Sokka doesn’t even crack a smile. He raises an eyebrow in Zuko’s direction, but barely looks at him for a second before turning his attention to Katara.

“What boy is this?” Sokka asks, the picture of oblivious innocence. 

“Back in Shu Jing, a million years ago, Zuko asked me for boy advice. I want to know if he listened to me.”

“Do I know this guy?”

“I don’t know,” Katara says. “Does Sokka know him, Zuko?”

Zuko can feel fire under his skin, and it has nothing to do with bending. His palm is sweating in Katara’s hand, and he knows she can feel the jump in his heart rate where her wrist touches his.

With his free hand, he tries his best to cover the furious red of his face as he stammers, “They’ve met.”

“Do _I_ know him?” Katara sounds far too excited for someone who doesn’t know the truth.

“Yes,” is all Zuko can manage, and even that is through gritted teeth. 

“Who is it?” Sokka asks, and Zuko stops covering his face just long enough to glare at him. “No, wait - tell us about him, I want to see if I can guess.”

There must be a law against this. At the very least, a very strong rule. A heavy fine. _Something._

But Katara is still holding his hand and looking at him with those great big eyes full of the words _waste some time with us,_ and Sokka is watching him with a private smile Katara can’t even see, and none of the embarrassment means anything, really.

Sokka jostles one of Zuko’s legs and lets his hand stay there, burning into the skin of his ankle. It shouldn’t help, because Zuko can’t ever think clearly with Sokka’s hands on him, but it does. It’s a lifeline. A reminder that in this game, Sokka is on his team.

And it _is_ a game. Zuko might not have chosen to play it, but he’ll be damned if he’s not going to win.

He stares at the ceiling, because he doesn’t know if he’ll last very long if he looks anyone in the eye, and starts to play.

“He’s smart,” he says, because he figures that the _vague_ road is his best shot at getting out of this alive. “Sometimes he’s too smart for his own good. And he - he never knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

“That’s not -” Sokka says, and Zuko looks at him, watching him realise he’s fulfilling his own prophecy, “- a particularly _glowing_ profile. I’m not sure I like this guy for you.”

“He's not as funny as he thinks he is,” Zuko continues, and he wonders if Katara catches the scandalised look that briefly takes over her brother’s face. “That’s what other people say, at least. But I don’t know, I think he’s pretty funny.”

He glances at Katara, and she nods at him, her grin now shrunk down to something softer, almost sad.

“He drives me insane,” he says, and Katara laughs, a tiny exhale through her nose. “But he makes me brave, too. He’s part of the reason I wanted to get rid of Sozin’s law in the first place, but he’s also where I got most of my courage to actually do it.”

Sokka’s hand on his ankle squeezes, so Zuko keeps going. Now that he’s started, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop. “He never stops thinking. He’s got all these huge ideas and plans, and I - well, I guess if he asked me to join him, I wouldn’t say no.”

“Is he good-looking?” It’s a joke, barely, but Sokka’s voice is distant, and he won’t meet Zuko’s gaze.

Zuko doesn’t look away from him, _can’t_ look away, as he says, “He’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

The room falls silent. The words just hang there, somewhere between a declaration and a challenge, until finally, _f_ _inally_ Sokka looks at him. His eyes shine like sapphires, glowing with something Zuko is too scared to name, and his lips part in the same awed way they do after a kiss. His grip on Zuko’s leg tightens almost imperceptibly. Zuko thinks he can hear the thunder of his heartbeat, but that might be his own.

“Sounds like you really like this guy,” Katara says, and Sokka’s eyes snap up to look at her. “Any theories, Sokka?”

“I - uh,” Sokka clears his throat, and he looks at Katara in a way that makes Zuko think he’s just trying to put his eyes somewhere that’s not Zuko’s face. “It’s a lot to process. Leave it with me awhile, I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”

Katara asks, and it takes Zuko a second to realise she’s talking to him, “Did you take my advice?”

Zuko wants to laugh. “I’m trying to keep it in mind.”

She squeezes his hand, once, then releases it to comb through the ends of her hair. “Any guy would be lucky to have you, Zuko.”

“I think I’d settle for just one,” he shrugs, and tries not to react when Sokka’s thumb swipes across the back of his leg, rubbing the smallest circle into the skin of his calf.

“Who knows,” Katara says, like the devil she is, “maybe this guy is just waiting for you to make the first move.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything. He just looks at her and wonders, not for the first time, exactly how much she knows about all of this. He suspects she might be like his uncle and far more aware than she’s letting on. 

Sokka is on his feet without a warning. Zuko only notices, at first, because the warm presence of his hand on his leg is gone. Sokka is looking right at him, his fingers twitching at his side, and there’s so much uncertainty written into every inch of him that Zuko almost doesn’t recognise him.

“Sokka?” Zuko says, and there’s that jump of his hand again. He pulls it back, rigid and balled into a fist, the effort of it evident in the clench of his jaw. 

“I have to -” Sokka starts, then tries again, “I’m going to the kitchen. To check on dinner. Or - I just have to go.”

He’s out the door like a bolting horse. Zuko watches him go, dumbfounded, and Katara joins him in staring at the door when he’s gone.

“I think I should go after him,” Katara says. “Sokka doesn’t cook. I’m not confident he knows _how_ to check on dinner.”

“Yeah, okay,” Zuko says, without really meaning to speak. Katara gets up a lot slower than Sokka did, and doesn’t race out like he did, either. 

She stops in the doorway, and Zuko can almost feel the Shu Jing night breeze on his skin with the way she says, “I meant what I said before, Zuko. He’s an idiot.”

And then she’s gone, too, and it’s just Zuko and the ink-stained parchment on the tea table left in the room. Alone again, sitting in a bed too big for just one.

* * *

Sokka creeps in again that night. 

It’s not that Zuko is _expecting_ Sokka to steal away into his bed in the middle of the night, he’s just not surprised when it happens. His door is open just a crack, and there’s an oil lamp lit in place of candles, and when Sokka peeks his head in the doorway, his grin puts every flame Zuko has ever conjured to shame.

“Are you waiting up for me?” Sokka asks. His feet are light and soundless on the floor as he tiptoes toward the bed.

Embarrassed heat blooms under Zuko’s skin. “Maybe.”

“A little presumptuous, isn’t it?”

“It’s only presumptuous if I’m wrong.”

“You could be wrong,” Sokka suggests. “I could be here just to say goodnight and be on my merry way.”

He’s at the bed now, and Zuko reaches out a hand toward him from where he sits against the headboard. “Am I wrong, Sokka?”

Sokka takes his hand and presses a kiss to the back of it as he slides between the sheets, all in one fluid motion. The heat under Zuko’s skin flares higher, brighter, hotter.

“No,” Sokka says, still holding Zuko’s hand at his mouth. “You’re not wrong, Zuko.”

Sokka leaves a kiss on the pad of each of Zuko’s fingers, and looks him solidly in the eye as he does it. Every nerve in Zuko’s body comes alive, every inch of his skin sensitive in a new, thrilling way. 

They had dinner maybe three hours ago, but Zuko looks at Sokka now and he’s starving all over again.

Sokka lets go of his hand, and just like that, it’s over. The tension curling in his gut and the goosebumps all along his arms ease away into nothing, like they were never even there.

Sokka pulls one of the pillows out from Zuko’s back and rests his head on it, settling down like he’s here to sleep. _Like he’s here to stay,_ Zuko thinks, and hope rises in him like the tide. 

Zuko leans down, shuffling out of his sitting position, to kiss Sokka’s cheek. Sokka turns his head at the last second, and Zuko catches him on the mouth.

Zuko kisses Sokka’s smile, and the tide rises higher. This, he thinks, might be a good way to drown.

He drops down onto his pillow, flat on his back now, and Sokka reaches beneath the sheet for his hand. Their fingers twine together, pieces falling into place, and something in Zuko’s chest squeezes. _Joy,_ he calls it, and brings the tangled mess of their hands to his mouth and presses his lips to Sokka’s knuckles.

“I didn’t know you told Katara you liked me,” Sokka says, apropos of nothing, and Zuko rolls his eyes. 

“I didn’t tell her it was _you,_ ” Zuko insists. “I have some sense of self-preservation, you know.”

“You don’t think she’d approve?” Sokka shuffles closer, almost moving all the way off his pillow, until their shoulders touch. It’s awkward to hold hands in a position like this, but Zuko doesn’t want to let him go.

“I wasn’t exactly eager to find out.”

“Well, I told her about you.” 

“You - what?” His voice comes out louder than he expects, so he hushes some when he asks, “What do you mean, you told her about me?”

“I mean, I told her about you,” Sokka says, and there’s that clumsy smile, in his voice and on his lips.

“When?” Zuko asks. “No, how? What did you say?”

“When she came to help me pack. That first week, when I cleared your schedule, she asked me why.”

“What did you tell her?”

Sokka says, like it’s as plain as the nose on his face, “I told her I did it so I could spend as much time with you as possible before I had to leave. She looked at me like she didn’t buy it, and she asked me why I really did it.”

“And?”

“And I told her the truth,” Sokka says, and Zuko hangs on every word. “I mean, that was already the truth, but I told her the rest. I told her I was - um, that I had feelings for you. Have. I _have_ feelings for you.”

Zuko works hard to power through the pink that rises in his cheeks. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have any other reaction to words like that. 

Sudden as a blow to the head, a thought occurs to him. “Do you think -”

“Yeah,” Sokka says. “I think my sister’s been trying to set us up. She wasn’t surprised when I told her how I feel about you, so I think she’s probably been trying for a while.”

“When we were in Shu Jing,” Zuko tells him, “I asked her for advice, and she told me to take action. That I shouldn’t just sit idly by and wait for things to happen around me. The night before we left the palace, I went to Uncle, and he told me pretty much the same thing.”

“You told Iroh?” Sokka gapes at him, something verging on fear in his eyes. “The Dragon of the West knows you have the hots for me?”

“It’s a little more than _hots_ , Sokka,” Zuko says. “And that’s not news, either. He saw us off, remember?”

“Still. I don’t want the shovel talk from the man who conquered Ba Sing Se one and a half times.”

Zuko laughs. He squeezes Sokka’s hand and says, “Then don’t break my heart.”

Sokka’s gaze, darting from Zuko’s eyes to his lips and back up again, turns so soft Zuko doesn’t know if he can bear it. He turns onto his side, their hands wedged between them now, and Zuko thinks that if he weren’t already on his back that stare would level him.

“There goes my weekend,” Sokka says. Zuko laughs again, and Sokka swallows the sound of it.

Zuko’s mouth is open when Sokka kisses him, so there’s no building up to it, no teasing pressure at the seal of his lips, but there is a kind of spectacular gentleness to the way he does it. A sort of shyness, even as Sokka shifts his position higher to kiss him deeper, to draw sounds from the back of his throat, to steal the very air he breathes.

Sokka releases his hand so he can hold himself up, planting both hands on either side of Zuko’s head, that body above him nothing but a temptation, and every drop of Zuko’s blood boils with want. He wants to touch, to taste, to feel, to be burned alive by the heat of Sokka’s skin. 

Zuko buries one hand in Sokka’s hair, careful not to pull, and twists the other into the front of Sokka’s sleep shirt. He tugs, pulling Sokka flush against him, chest to chest as one of Sokka’s legs slips between his own. 

He swears softly as his hand is crushed between them. Sokka laughs, hot and breathy against his lips, and Zuko falls for him all over again.

His hand in Sokka’s hair moves to cup his jaw. His thumb swipes across Sokka’s cheek, clumsy and stuttering in its movement, and Sokka pulls back to look at him.

As he looms above him, Sokka’s hair dangles down and brushes lightly against Zuko’s face. Zuko tucks it behind his ear, Sokka turning his face to lean into the touch, and makes a futile attempt to catch his breath.

“Wow,” Zuko huffs.

“Wow what?” Sokka laughs. His eyes glow an impossible blue in the low lamplight.

“I don’t know,” Zuko says, his hand still on Sokka’s face. “You’re - I don’t know. Just...wow.”

“You sure have a way with words, Firelord.” 

And there it is again, just like the night before. Sokka says _Firelord_ like it has the same meaning as _lover,_ and Zuko recognises, finally, that it’s the same way Sokka says his name - the same way Sokka has been saying his name for months. It’s that same something else, the same something _more_.

Sokka moves again, throwing the leg he has between Zuko’s all the way over so he’s bracketing Zuko’s hips, sitting upright as he goes. Zuko bends his legs on instinct alone, and Sokka grins at him as he settles back against them.

It’s a compromising position to say the least, and Zuko knows that if the heat from a moment ago were still there, he’d be looking at Sokka like a meal and not just the beautiful man whose hand he gets to hold in this dark room.

Sokka laces their fingers together, looking down at Zuko with the same eyes he’d had when Zuko told him he would come with him to the South Pole. 

“Why did you leave earlier?” Zuko asks. It’s been weighing on him, but he doesn’t realise how much until the words are out of his mouth.

Sokka looks away from him, bashful and pink in his cheeks as he says, “I had to get out of there before I did something stupid.”

“Like what?”

“Like make this... _thing_ more than just you and me,” Sokka whispers. “Like say something I don’t want my sister in the room to hear. Like kiss you until I can’t breathe and then keep going.”

Zuko’s heart nearly stops, and he doesn’t know which part is to blame. 

Sokka is looking at him again, and Zuko has three words on the tip of his tongue. They well up inside him, filling every pore, and he thinks he might burst with the pressure of it.

“Will you stay?” he asks. Those aren’t the right three words, but they’re as close as he’ll allow himself to get to them.

Sokka doesn’t say anything, but his fingers tighten around Zuko’s, like he’s trying to ground himself. Like he’s trying to convince himself this is real. Zuko knows the feeling.

Zuko sits up, close enough that it’s hard to see Sokka’s face right, and he can hear a sharp intake of breath as his free hand finds a home in Sokka’s hair again. The position is awkward and barely comfortable, but Zuko can feel every breath Sokka takes as if it were his own, and the short stubble along his jaw where Zuko’s lips brush as he speaks is rough in a way that electrifies every part of him.

“Sokka,” he whispers, and he can feel the shiver that runs through him, “will you stay with me tonight?”

He remembers how he felt seeing Sokka on his own side, with his own pillow and that confident curl to his lips, and wants to add, _and every night after?_

Sokka turns his head and catches Zuko’s mouth in a kiss that feels like a vow. 

“I thought you’d never ask.” It comes out half a laugh, each word a separate ghost on Zuko’s lips.

Later, when Sokka’s back is pressed close against Zuko’s chest and their hands are clasped together, Zuko thinks of every other time they’ve shared a bed. How many times have they woken up like this, coiled around each other and holding on for dear life, and shrugged it off like it’s nothing? How many times has Zuko had to pretend this isn’t the safest he’s ever felt? 

He buries his face in the curve of Sokka’s neck where it meets his shoulder and breathes him in as he counts to himself the times they’ve slept beside each other without intending to, and then the times it’s been on purpose.

 _On purpose,_ he thinks. There was no _on purpose_ until now. They might have gone to bed knowing the other would be there, but this - this, now, _this_ is on purpose.

Zuko thinks, as he allows the steady in-and-out of Sokka’s breathing to carry him into sleep, he wants to keep doing things _on purpose._

* * *

For the first time in days, Zuko finds himself alone in the middle of the afternoon without anyone coming to distract him. Sokka and Katara are wandering around the ship somewhere, and he occasionally hears the echo of their laughter - but the important thing is, they’re not here in his room with him.

He sits down at the tea table, making a mental note to actually use it for tea at some point, and starts to work.

It’s difficult to get into the swing of it, even after only a few days off, but once he does, he’s flying. He reads through trade agreements and welfare proposals and propositions of every kind, making notes as he goes, and about an hour and a half in he really starts to feel like he’s making progress.

It doesn’t last long.

He’s been working for two hours at a very generous estimate, when he’s finally interrupted by the sound of bouncing footsteps behind him. He pretends not to hear, in the futile hopes that he might be left alone, but no such luck.

An arm slings over his shoulder, fingers dangling a hair away from his brush hand, and a warm body presses against his back. For a moment, before anyone speaks, Zuko is overwhelmed by the word _proximity_ and the sea-salt smell of Sokka’s skin.

“Hey, babe,” Sokka says, and his lips can’t be more than an inch from Zuko’s jaw as he rests his chin on his shoulder, “you working on anything I can help with?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Zuko says. Then, shifting to look at him, “ _Babe?_ ”

Sokka shrugs, as much as a person can shrug while clinging to another from behind, “Just trying it out. You don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Zuko says. He thinks on it a second, until the thrill of getting to _hear_ a word like that fades away and stops clouding his judgement, and adds, “But no, I don’t.”

Sokka laughs, light and uncomplicated, and the sound of it goes into Zuko’s ear and settles right next to his heart. He presses his lips to Zuko’s cheek, and Zuko loses his grip on the brush in his hand. How easily he comes undone.

He scoops up the brush before it can ruin anything, and drops it back in the inkwell. “Did you need something, or are you just here to distract me?”

Sokka folds his legs beneath himself to sit next to Zuko, dragging the arm that was draped over his shoulder down along his back. His hand brushes ever so lightly over Zuko’s thigh before coming to a final stop in his own lap, and Zuko thinks, _distraction it is._

“I never had to state my business before,” Sokka says.

“You weren’t as distracting before.”

“Really?”

“No,” Zuko admits. “You’ve always been a nuisance.”

Sokka shoves him, playful in the way they’ve always been with each other. Something pleasant and grand swims up inside him with the knowledge that that hasn’t changed - even with everything else, they can still just be _boys_ together.

Then Sokka’s hand lingers on his arm, circling around his bicep, and the laugh on his face takes a turn for the magnetic as he leans in a little closer, and Zuko reminds himself that sometimes change is good.

Zuko kisses him, once, the barest peck of lips to smiling lips. Change is _very_ good.

“I did have a reason to come in here,” Sokka says, his voice low, “but I’ll forget if you will.”

Sokka’s hand moves from his arm to cup his face, and Zuko is suddenly very aware of the open door. Katara could walk in any second, and there would go their perfect bubble of _just me and you._

He presses a kiss to Sokka’s wrist and pulls his hand away. “What did you want?”

Something like disappointment flits across Sokka’s features, but he replaces it quickly. “I went digging through your luggage, and -”

“So much for privacy.”

“I listened to you snore all night, Zuko,” Sokka tells him. “And kissed your gross morning breath.”

“I don’t snore,” Zuko says, but he’s blushing. There is no end to the ways Sokka can find to make him blush, it seems.

“You do, but it’s okay, because I already knew that,” Sokka says. “Anyway, I found your swords in one of the trunks. I don’t know what enemies your uncle thinks you’re going to encounter on this trip, besides maybe Katara when she finds out we didn’t tell her about us right away, but I’m _bored_ and I want you to come spar with me.”

“Sokka, I’m -”

“Working, I know,” Sokka says. “But work can wait. Come get all sweaty with me.”

He fixes Zuko with a desperate puppy-dog look, the one that never fails. Zuko wonders if Sokka knows it never fails because he can’t ever say no to him in the first place. He wonders if Sokka is aware of all the terrible and selfish reasons Zuko has for making him pout.

“It’ll be fun,” Sokka promises. “We’ll get an audience. I’ll kick your ass in front of the whole crew.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Zuko says, rolling his eyes for good measure, “how’s a guy supposed to resist?”

“I’m glad you see it that way, Firelord.” Sokka’s voice is teasing, but Zuko gets stuck on the way he looks at him, no longer pleading but with a dare in his eyes and a challenge in the sly curl of his smile.

Sokka stands, hand trailing to the hilt of his sword at his belt, taunting and provocative in a way Zuko isn’t entirely sure he intends. Zuko’s heart pounds in his chest, a heavy _thum-thum-thum_ he can feel against his ribs. He would be embarrassed if it weren’t for the fact that Sokka has drawn this exact response from him every second of every day for more than three years. 

“Give me a couple of minutes to finish up,” Zuko says. It’s a struggle to keep his voice even, and a harder one to keep his hands to himself. “I’ll meet you up on deck.”

“Don’t keep me waiting,” Sokka says, making his way back to the doorway. Some of the effect of it is lost, though, when he stumbles over nothing and nearly crashes into the metal frame. Zuko manages to spare him _some_ embarrassment by biting his tongue around a barking laugh, but it is a close thing.

There’s not much finishing up to do. He corks the ink well and re-ties a couple of scrolls, but most of his time is spent trying to prepare himself for what’s to come. 

The problem isn’t that they’ve never sparred before, because they have. They train together all the time at the palace; with all the high society and political nonsense he has to deal with, Zuko will take any opportunity to let off some steam. 

The problem, such as it is, is that this is the first time they’ve sparred since starting all of _this._

This is the first time they’ve sparred since Zuko learned the feeling of Sokka’s mouth on his throat, the heat of Sokka’s body pressed as close to his own as he can get it, the sound of Sokka’s laughter muffled by Zuko’s skin as he buries it into a shoulder in a dark room.

Zuko wonders, as he takes the stairs up to the deck two at a time, how much work it’ll be to keep his mind off the general topic of _Sokka_ when he’s got a sword in his hand.

In the open air, it barely takes Zuko a second to spot Sokka, lounging with his elbows on the guard rail at the bow of the ship, sizing up the horizon. He remembers, like a hurricane through his thoughts, this exact scene on a different ship from a different time, with a different reason for the thumping in his chest. He should’ve known that Sokka had meant it when he offered to show him the stars that night. He should’ve known that it was a promise, not just an invitation.

But he knows now, and it feels familiar and new all at once as he approaches Sokka. He keeps his feet light, trying to mask any sound that might give him away, but Sokka rolls his shoulders in a way that somehow manages to be _affectionate_ and he knows he’s been made.

Zuko reaches the bow and leans his back against the rail. The metal is uncomfortable and sea-wind cold even through his layers, but he puts up with it, because Sokka presses a shoulder against his and flashes him his most charming smile.

“Hey, sailor,” Sokka says, looking at him. His eyes are bright with mischief and adventure and _I’ve got a proposition for you._

If it weren’t for Katara talking loudly with one of the crew on the other side of the deck, Zuko thinks, he would pull Sokka’s hair free from its wolf tail and kiss him until the world ended around them.

“Don't look at me like that,” Sokka says, like he can read Zuko’s mind, “or I’m going to do something stupid.”

“Then don’t look at _me_ like that,” Zuko says.

“Like what?”

“Like you _want_ to do the stupid thing.”

Sokka laughs for longer than the joke - if you could even call it that - really calls for. He presses closer with his shoulder, and when Zuko takes a step back to steady himself, he shoves him away in Katara’s direction.

“Katara!” Sokka calls, his voice suddenly huge and magnificent. “We have a challenger! Bring forth the weaponry!”

Katara rolls her eyes, excuses herself to the woman Zuko now recognises as one of the kitchen hands, and takes a series of complicated steps that seem to be half-dance, half-stumble toward Zuko and Sokka. She draws Zuko’s swords from her belt. He hadn’t realised she was wearing them, but they suit her. Maybe he’ll get her a pair of her own, in case there’s ever another lunar eclipse and she needs to teach someone a lesson.

She hands the swords over to Zuko with a wink he’s bound to overthink later, and saunters off back to the kitchen hand - Lina? - as Sokka draws his own sword. The movement catches Zuko’s eye, and he has to really _try_ not to lose the use of his legs at the sight of Sokka and his blade that never shines.

Zuko’s swords feel heavy in his hands after so long away from them. He swings them, graceful arcs and furious circles, until they’re his again. Until they feel like an extension of his own body.

Everything else with Sokka now is seat-of-his-pants improvisation, acting on nothing but instinct and what feels good without ever feeling totally sure of himself, but this is familiar. They’ve done this a thousand times before, played this game of taunting and teasing and calling bluffs so many times that when Sokka points at him with the tip of his sword, Zuko sees it not as a threat but as the first move in a well-practiced sequence.

“You’re sure about this?” Sokka asks, his sword blurring in front of him as he loosens his shoulders. “You can always back out. No one’s going to judge you.”

“That’s not true,” Katara calls, somewhere behind Zuko. “I’m definitely going to judge.”

Zuko tosses a glare at her over his shoulder. She’s perched on one of the old bashed-up crates the whole ship has been using as deck seating, her face split into a grin that borders on rude. Lina stands beside her, arms crossed, her expression trained into neutrality. 

Zuko looks back at Sokka, crossing his swords over each other just to hear the harsh grinding sound of metal on metal. He does it again, and the sound is almost as satisfying as the grimace on Sokka’s face.

“You know I hate that noise,” Sokka says. “I thought we agreed after last time, no psychological warfare?”

“Maybe you did,” Zuko says. He starts to circle Sokka, slow, deliberate steps around the edge of an imaginary ring. There are no boundaries but the rail separating them from the open ocean, but they’ve both done this dance enough times to know what’s evasive and what’s running away.

Sokka’s knees bend into an almost-crouch, and his easy teasing smile is gone. In its place is something akin to a scowl, the closest he ever gets to looking mean. His brow furrows in concentration as he watches Zuko’s movements. Zuko’s defensive position slips, just barely, to give him a better view of the serpentine twist of Sokka’s smirk.

Sokka lunges, bounding from one side of their imaginary ring to the other in the blink of an eye. Zuko barely has time to readjust his guard before Sokka is on him, a flurry of sword and motion and bared teeth. Zuko matches every one of his strikes, blocks every swing, and avoids every attempt Sokka makes to trip him up.

Every now and then, any time there’s a particularly loud clash of blades or fierce grunt of effort, Katara cheers from her spot on the crate. Zuko doesn’t have time to figure out whose side she’s on.

Zuko crosses his swords to meet a downward strike from Sokka, and their eyes meet in the gap between the blades. Sokka’s gaze is heady and unwavering, just another weapon in his arsenal. The corner of his mouth ticks up and he winks at Zuko.

Everything about it - Sokka’s eyes locked on his, the bead of sweat rolling down Sokka’s neck to pool in the hollow of his throat and the way it seems to beckon Zuko closer, the unrelenting pressure of Sokka’s blade against Zuko’s - makes him want to scream. It makes him furious, that Sokka can look like that, can look at _him_ like that, and there’s not a single thing he can do about it. Sokka knows what he’s doing, too, and Zuko wishes he could hate him for the smug gleam in his eye. What ever happened to _no psychological warfare?_

Adrenaline rushes through his veins, a raging typhoon, making him feel stronger than he is and push harder against Sokka than he thought himself capable of.

Zuko gives a last shove, and Sokka stumbles back. He’s so far away now that Zuko can’t see the sweat on his throat, but the knowledge that it’s there distracts him enough for Sokka to regain his footing and dance farther away. Circling again, Sokka wipes his brow with the back of his hand. His chest heaves with his laboured breathing, and Zuko can’t take his eyes off him.

That’s the other thing about sparring, he supposes. It gives him an excuse to drink in the sight of Sokka, to drag his eyes over every inch of him. There aren’t many perks to having someone swing a sword at your head, but this is definitely one of them.

Sokka moves like a cat, ready to pounce at any moment, but it’s Zuko who makes the first move this time. He drops into a low crouch and rolls across the same space Sokka had leapt earlier. It doesn’t put him in the most convenient position on the way back up, but it’s worth it for the shock on Sokka’s face when he lands on one knee before him.

A delighted gasp rises from the general direction of the crates, but Zuko barely hears it over the heavy sound of his own heartbeat, an incessant thunder in his ears. 

His swords come up in a cross again to deflect Sokka’s swing, but he’s at a disadvantage without a firm stance. His eyes find Sokka’s again, and he hears Sokka’s breath catch. Maybe, he considers, being on his knees and out of breath doesn’t give Sokka the upper hand he thought it did.

Colour rushes into Sokka’s face as his jaw clenches around the words, “Oh, you _asshole,_ ” and Zuko can’t help the little laugh that escapes him.

Zuko forces himself up off his knees and finds himself right in Sokka’s space, barely enough room between them for the swords. From here he can see the specific way Sokka’s sweat-damp tunic sticks to him, how it clings to his shoulders and somehow makes them seem wider, broader, more capable of bearing Zuko’s weight should he give in to this sudden new impulse to climb Sokka like a tree, pretence be damned.

Sokka shoves him then, like he weighs nothing at all. It’s his own fault, he supposes, for letting himself get distracted before he could settle into a real stance. He stumbles back, but there’s no saving his balance. He maintains _some_ dignity by turning the fall into another tumble, the reverse of his last move. It’s not nearly as graceful this time, and he loses a sword in the roll. It skitters away across the deck, coming to a stop by Katara’s feet.

Sokka is on him again in a second, mad swipes of his sword keeping Zuko from getting up off the ground. He doesn’t account for Zuko’s legs, though, and Zuko catches him at the shins in a complicated lock he’s sure Ty Lee would coo at. Sokka falls like a tree: head-first.

Zuko rolls just in time to avoid being flattened, but Sokka recovers quicker than he expects. Without warning, Sokka climbs over him, knees trapping his hips and rendering his legs more or less useless. With one hand, he pins Zuko’s sword wrist to the deck.

Just for a second, Zuko lets himself remember a moment not dissimilar to this one from last night. Heat rises in his already flushed face.

And then Sokka has the blade of his sword hovering at Zuko’s throat, and he decides it’s probably best to put off reminiscing for another time.

“You’re getting sloppy,” Sokka says. His voice is white-hot, and he’s got that grin on his face, just this side of arrogant. Zuko wants to devour him.

Instead, he uses what’s left of the strength in his legs to raise his hips off the ground, lifting Sokka with him. He gives himself a second to enjoy the look on Sokka’s face, his wide eyes and the intrigued _o_ of his mouth, and then he rolls.

It’s been a while since he’s grappled like this, and he’s never done it with a sword at his throat before, but he manages it. He flips them, and Sokka is on his back now, lips parted in dazed confusion as the air is knocked from him. Sokka struggles, briefly, before the fight leaves him. 

“Am I?” Zuko says it like a dare. He uses the tip of his sword to tilt Sokka’s chin up, and as he stares him down, he hears the quiet _clang_ of Sokka’s sword hitting the deck. Zuko smiles, all teeth.

There’s a look in Sokka’s eye now that says maybe he doesn’t mind being in this position. Sokka squirms, the hard line of something _urgent_ pressing against Zuko’s leg, and - well, maybe they’re in agreement. 

From up here, Zuko can see every detail of Sokka’s face - the sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip, the tip of his tongue where he holds it between his teeth to keep from saying something to get them in trouble, the infinite black of his wide pupils. Again, or maybe still, Zuko wants to _devour_ him.

Lina’s voice cuts clean through his thoughts. “So who wins?”

It takes Zuko a moment to figure out where she is, but when he finds her, her arms are still folded across her chest. She's on her feet next to Katara, who stands with her hands on her hips and a frown Zuko can only call _sceptical_ on her face.

He looks back down at Sokka, now staring up at him with a lopsided smile Zuko couldn’t resist if he tried, and offers to him, “Draw?”

“I’ll take a draw,” Sokka says.

* * *

Sokka disappears right after dinner, proclaiming a severe need for a nap, which leaves just Zuko and Katara and the elephant in the room.

This is the perfect opportunity for Katara to ask him all the burning questions she has from their talk the previous day, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t bring up any of it - not her being in the loop but her brother not, not the vagueness of Zuko’s listed descriptors and how they only point in one direction, not anything she might have learned from following Sokka out of the room. It’s a kindness, Zuko is sure of that, he’s just not sure what he’s done to earn it.

They sit and talk for hours, until the candles are down to stubs and every other word is punctuated with a yawn. Zuko is careful to steer the conversation away from anything that might be even tangentially linked to his romantic life, and he can tell Katara knows exactly what he’s doing. She doesn’t mention it, though, and Zuko finds himself grateful for it.

She asks him about the last days of meetings before leaving the Fire Nation, and Zuko is all too happy to talk. He’s spent so much of this trip so far thinking about Sokka and how he feels about him and how he can get him alone without raising suspicions, that it’s almost refreshing to talk about this, painful and difficult as it may be.

He tells her every detail he can remember, from words exchanged to arguments raised to faces made. He tries the accents, too, and she laughs when his voice breaks trying to imitate the high nasal tones of one of the noblewomen.

Zuko says, quietly, “I just hope Uncle is doing better than I did,” and they lapse into a long silence.

Eventually, Katara says, “I hope so too.” It’s not quite the right thing to say, but it’s not wrong either. Zuko doesn’t know exactly what he was expecting to hear. He’s not sure what he _needs_ to hear, but he figures that’s close enough.

Katara sets a hand on his shoulder on her way out, squeezing a _goodnight_ there as she goes.

Zuko leaves soon after she does, nothing but the quiet background rumble of the engine to keep him company as he traverses the shadowy corridors of the ship.

When he finally makes it back to his room, he finds Katara leaning in the doorway looking in. Her arms are folded in an unimpressed sort of way, but her smile is fond when he joins her at the threshold.

She says, “Do you want to move him?”

It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark of his room, and then he sees it: a man-shaped lump in his bed, curled carefully toward Zuko’s side without encroaching on it. He’s taken Zuko’s pillow, though, that much is clear from the indulgent swell beneath his head.

The picture knocks something in Zuko askew. Air rushes out of his lungs in a long, unsteady stream, something warm and aching filling up the space in his chest.

“No,” he says, and it’s the truth. He’d let Sokka sleep for a century if it meant he could stay here, watching him take up space in his life.

Katara looks at him, and he can’t tell what she’s thinking. He clarifies, “You know what he’s like, he sleeps like the dead. I’ll just - I’ll kick him out if he wakes up on his own, but I’m not about to go poking that platypus-bear.”

Katara laughs, a quiet huff of a thing, and then fixes him with a testing look. “You’re staying here?”

Zuko shrugs. “It’s my room.”

“There’s an empty -” she starts, but seems to think better of it. “You know what? It’s been a long day. Sleep tight, Zuko.”

Katara doesn’t wait for him to respond, just tiptoes down the hall to her own room. Her feet still make a substantial enough sound that it would probably wake anyone other than Sokka. Zuko watches her go, and wonders if Sokka is that loud when he sneaks out every night. He hopes not, because that would mean the sneaking is pointless. Katara hasn’t said anything to either of them about it, though, so maybe they’re still in the clear.

But Sokka doesn’t have to sneak out tonight, because he’s already here. 

He wouldn’t put it past Sokka for this to have been the plan all along - disappear for a nap, use someone else’s room in case your sister needs to use yours, and let it turn into a full night’s sleep. A happy accident. Foolproof.

Zuko closes the door behind himself and smiles into the dark. 

The dark whispers to him, “Is she gone?”

Zuko nearly jumps out of his skin. “Sokka?”

“Do you get many other night time visitors?”

Zuko scrambles across the room to light a lamp. It burns to bright, golden life, and when Zuko looks back at the bed he finds Sokka sprawled out in the middle, stretching in a way that shouldn’t be attractive but makes Zuko’s thoughts go blurry around the edges anyway.

“I thought you were asleep,” Zuko says. He should feel awkward, he thinks, standing at the edge of his own bed while Sokka, still fully dressed but for his bare feet, practically _writhes_ on it. Instead, he feels a little exhilarated. Whether that’s from the fact of Sokka in his bed or successfully pulling one over on Katara, he can’t tell.

“I was,” Sokka says. “But then _someone_ had to have a whole conversation about my sleeping habits four feet away from me.”

Sokka sits up and stretches again. He makes a sound to go with the movement, something halfway between a sigh and a moan. It’s the most obscene thing Zuko has ever heard, and he loses control of his mouth.

“Are you going to sleep in that?” he asks.

Sokka raises an eyebrow at him. “Eager.”

Zuko blushes. He hides his face in a hand for a moment, and tries to save himself. “No, I meant -”

“I know what you meant,” Sokka says, like he knows what lie Zuko was about to come out with. “C’mere.”

Zuko sits on the bed, a clumsy and graceless movement that’s closer to a fall. He ends up with his back on the mattress and his legs still dangling off the edge, but his head lands in Sokka’s lap and the smile Sokka gives him is nothing short of glorious.

Sokka traces a fingertip back and forth along his hairline. Zuko stares up at him and he can feel his own expression turning hopeless and dopey, but can’t find it in himself to stop it.

“If you wanted to get me out of my clothes,” Sokka says, his voice low and sultry, “all you had to do was ask.” Then, before Zuko can do anything but blush, and maybe without even noticing the words pass his lips, he says, “You have such pretty eyes.”

“I missed you,” Zuko whispers, because he doesn’t know how else to react to any of that. “When you were napping.”

“Katara’s no fun, huh?”

“No, that’s not it,” Zuko insists. “I just - I like when you’re near me, Sokka.”

Sokka’s touch stills for a heartbeat, just at the edge of the scar. “Well,” he says, recovering, “I like being near you.”

Zuko surges upward, eyes fluttering shut, at the same time that Sokka leans down. They meet in the middle like a river meets the sea, drawn to each other by nature and instinct and inevitability. 

Zuko pulls his legs onto the bed, tucking them under himself so he can sit up properly, and holds the side of Sokka’s face with a stronger hand than he’s ever done before. The kiss doesn’t stay soft for long - if it ever was - as Sokka grips the back of Zuko’s skull to haul him closer.

Sokka breathes a sigh into his mouth, and Zuko’s head swims with three words. They’re not the same ones from the previous night, not even close, but at least he knows he can say them. These ones are far more pressing, and slip easily off his tongue as his hands bunch in the fabric of Sokka’s tunic.

“Take this off,” he says, his breath coming in short bursts. This is more forward than either of them have been before, and fear flashes through Zuko for a moment when Sokka doesn’t say anything.

Then Sokka nods, vigorous and earnest, and he says, “Yes. Yeah, let’s do that.”

It takes a long time to happen, because Sokka kisses him again, open-mouthed and starving, and Zuko gets lost. He is so wrapped up in the feeling of Sokka’s mouth on his, Sokka’s hand in his hair, Sokka’s chest against his when he climbs into his lap, the scrape of Sokka’s teeth at the curve where his neck meets his shoulder, that he forgets. 

He forgets, until Sokka breaks away to whip the tunic off over his head, and then he remembers.

Zuko stares. He stares and stares and stares, might well go on staring forever, stuck in a permanent state of marveling at the endlessness of Sokka’s skin. 

This is not the first time he’s seen Sokka without a shirt. It’s not even the second. Zuko has seen Sokka’s bare chest more times than he can count, but not like this. Never like this. All the other times before, Zuko has had to keep his hands and his reactions to himself, but now - now he doesn’t have to. Now he gets to wear his feelings about this plain on his face.

Now he gets to _touch,_ he realises, and he doesn’t know where to start.

“Stop being weird,” Sokka says, stretching up into the two inches between them to kiss him again.

Sokka’s hands slide along Zuko’s thighs, gripping the undersides tightly for a moment to draw him even closer, and Zuko stops being weird - which is to say, he stops thinking altogether. 

His hands land on Sokka’s sides at first, a hovering touch at his waist, and then he gets greedy. His hands have a mind of their own, insatiable and frenzied, moving of their own accord and trying to feel every part of Sokka at once. Sokka keeps kissing him, sloppy and laughing, and the dig of his nails into Zuko’s thighs pulls impossible sounds from Zuko’s throat.

Zuko pulls back to breathe, and suddenly Sokka’s hands are snaking up the back of his shirt and he feels like he’s been winded. The slow drag of palms along his back electrifies him, every nerve ending charged and sensitive. Even after exhausting himself today, Zuko has never felt more awake.

Sokka says, _"_ _Zuko,”_ and it sounds like his skin feels: raw and wanting.

Zuko gets the message, loud and clear, and lets Sokka pull the shirt off him. It robs them, paradoxically, of their urgency.

Zuko touches Sokka’s face, cradling it like porcelain, and studies every pore the way he’d wanted to earlier when they were sparring. Sokka’s arms wrap around him, pulling them chest to chest. Zuko is incredibly aware of every place their bodies touch.

When Sokka kisses him this time, just once, it’s tender rather than heated, no impatience left in it. There’s love in this kiss, Zuko thinks, and he’s not afraid of it.

“Hey,” Sokka says, “can I borrow some pyjamas?”

Zuko blinks at him. And then he starts laughing, and he can’t stop.

“What’s funny?” Sokka asks. 

“Nothing,” Zuko wheezes, “I just - that’s just not what I was thinking about, that’s all.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Zuko gives him a look, and Sokka’s mouth curves into that blinding smile, the one he saves just for Zuko. Sokka kisses him again, and it’s the same as before, but he’s still smiling. Out of everything that’s just happened, _this_ is what sets off a furious blush in Zuko’s cheeks.

He ducks his head to hide it, like Sokka can’t see the pink rising up all over his chest, and says, “I’ll get you some pyjamas.”

He slides out of Sokka’s lap, Sokka’s fingertips trailing across his skin as he goes. He sets his feet on the floor and immediately gets one caught in the folds of Sokka’s tunic. He hops on the other for a moment, trying to fish himself free from the fabric. Stumbling, he steadies himself with a hand on a bedpost, and throws a wicked glare over his shoulder at Sokka’s laughter.

“Not a word,” Zuko warns him.

“Who’s gonna believe me?” Sokka says, his face still creased in laughter. “What would I even say? 'I saw the Firelord fall over his own feet because he was too busy trying to get me naked to look where he was throwing things?' Sure, that’ll go down well at the breakfast table.”

Zuko, now free and rooting through his trunk at the foot of the bed, rolls his eyes.

“I wasn’t trying to -” he starts, and then Sokka gives him a look, and he stops. “Okay, so maybe I _was,_ but you’re the one that took it off. _You’re_ the safety hazard.”

“You be sure to remember to put that in your next letter to Iroh,” Sokka drawls, “so he can have me put in the stocks for endangering the life of the Firelord when we go home.”

_Home._

Sokka probably doesn’t mean much by it, he’s probably already forgotten that he said it, but Zuko can’t stop hearing it. His hands go still inside the trunk, gripping something soft and clean with white knuckles, and he raises his eyes to Sokka.

“Do you mean that?” Zuko asks, willing his voice not to break. “Do you think of the palace as home?”

He doesn’t say _Fire Nation,_ because he knows that could never be true. Some days, it’s not even true for him.

Sokka looks at him, with big eyes and a frown like sympathy. He says, _“Zuko,”_ and it sounds like _home_ and all at once, Zuko thinks he understands.

He pulls out the spare pyjamas and offers them to Sokka, his steps shaky but more sure of themselves than before as he approaches the bed again. Sokka doesn’t take them straight away, just grabs hold of the fabric in a way that lets his fingers touch Zuko’s for a long moment.

Zuko gestures vaguely to the washroom door on the opposite wall. “I’ll, um. Yeah.”

He fishes pyjamas of his own from the trunk on his way, and the whole time he spends changing and washing his face and brushing his teeth, all he can think about is the word _home._

Zuko emerges again back into the room, and as he crosses to the other side and slips in between the sheets, the whole scene is almost too much to take. Sokka in _his_ pyjamas, Sokka in _his_ bed, Sokka stealing _his_ pillow.

“The palace isn’t my home,” Sokka explains, sitting up to tug the elastic from his hair. “The palace is _your_ home, and I - Zuko, I just want to be where you are.”

Zuko looks at him. “So when you say -”

“Home is where the heart is, sweetheart.” Sokka smiles, something small and private and timid, like he doesn’t know Zuko’s chest is about to burst open. The flame in the lamp on the locker beside him flares brighter.

Zuko pulls his pillow out from under Sokka so he can bury his face in it. Into the pillow, he says, “You can’t just say something like that.”

“Or what?” Sokka laughs. “You’ll fall in love with me?”

Zuko lifts his face from the pillow to look at him, and it’s not just the words. It’s never been just the words. It’s that smile, the shine of his eyes, the easy touch of his fingertips to Zuko’s temple, the soft press of his lips to Zuko’s cheek. It’s a thousand tiny things a minute, all of them ruining Zuko for anyone else ever again.

“Yes,” Zuko says, as close now to saying those three words as he’s ever been. “That’s exactly what.”

Sokka laughs again, and Zuko feels it like a breeze across his face.

Zuko doesn’t hide in the pillow again like he wants to. Instead, he lets Sokka pull him close, and buries his face in his chest. Sokka hasn’t done the fastenings on the pyjama shirt, so Zuko’s nose makes contact with his bare skin, intoxicating and warm. Zuko wraps his arms around Sokka’s waist, burrowing deeper. Sokka lets out another laugh, and Zuko hears it rumbling in his chest before it reaches the air.

“Zuko,” Sokka says, and Zuko can hear it in his heartbeat, “can you get the light?”

He can and he will, because he has never denied Sokka anything and he’s not going to start now, but he doesn’t want to. Right at this moment, he wants to tell Sokka no, just so he doesn’t have to move from the cocoon of this embrace. It’s dramatic, he knows, but he’s warm and comfortable and safe here, in the arms of the man who calls him _home._

He presses a kiss to Sokka’s chest, right over his heart, and lingers long enough to feel the beat quicken under his lips. It’s an awkward twist and shuffle to worm out of their tangle of limbs enough to get a hold of the lamplight. Sokka follows him as he shifts up the mattress and flattens onto his back, either unable or unwilling to stop touching him for even a moment. Zuko gives himself a second to feel flattered.

He plucks the flame from the lamp and holds it at the tip of his finger. It’s a fairly basic firebending move, but it’s showy, and it can be elegant in the right hands. At the sound of Sokka’s soft, _“oh,”_ Zuko thinks those hands might be his.

Sokka’s head falls onto Zuko’s shoulder as he holds up the tiny fire for him to see. It dances along his fingers, weaving between them like a coin. Zuko can’t see Sokka’s expression, but he can feel the arm around his waist tighten and he can hear the catch of his breath. It fills him with something inexplicable and wonderful.

“I’ve never seen firebending up close like this,” Sokka says, half a whisper. “It’s kind of pretty.”

“It has its moments,” Zuko agrees. Sokka sighs and presses closer against him. The flame flickers with his pulse.

It goes out with a tiny puff of smoke, and the dark of night rushes in to fill the space.

It’s a pure black kind of dark for a moment, and then something beautiful happens: the waxing moon slides out from behind a cloud and into line with one of the porthole windows, blanketing the room in an eerie grey light. 

Sokka lifts up from Zuko’s shoulder to flash him a smile. His eyes are the colour of a stormfront.

His hand moves from Zuko’s waist to travel further up his chest, a ghost along his ribs, as he settles his head back down on Zuko’s shoulder.

Zuko runs a hand through Sokka’s hair, his small finger grazing along the soft bristles where it’s cropped short at the sides. Sokka hums, so he does it again, and again, and again, until his eyelids start to droop and his hand stops, resting on Sokka’s head.

* * *

In the early hours of the morning, Zuko jolts awake at the sound of a heavy _thud_ on the deck above. “Did you hear that?”

Nestled against his side, Sokka stirs. He says, his voice a sleep-thick croak, “Let the guards get it. It’s probably nothing. Go back to sleep, Zuko.”

“You’re probably right.” He settles back down with a yawn, letting Sokka pull him tight against his chest. He shifts closer, keeping the protective arm wrapped around his waist in place by laying his own on top of it and knitting their fingers together. Sokka presses a dreamy, open-mouthed kiss to the base of his neck, and Zuko feels all of his bones turn to liquid.

Somewhere above them, there’s a yell of surprise and a howl of pain.

Zuko’s eyes fly open again, and he feels Sokka stiffen at his back. “I _know_ you heard that.”

“I hate this damn ship,” Sokka says, already drawing away from Zuko to climb out of bed. “Come on, let’s check it out.”

Sokka scoops his boomerang up from the pile of shoes and boots and various items of discarded clothing that takes up much of the floor by the trunk at the foot of the bed. He leads Zuko out into the hallway.

They reach the corner before the steps up to the deck, and Zuko grabs him by the wrist to stop him.

“What?” Sokka hisses, concern and annoyance etched into his face. His pulse jumps under Zuko’s fingertips.

“Just - why are you in front?”

Sokka waves the boomerang at him. “I have a weapon.”

“Sokka,” Zuko says, “I can shoot fire. From my _hands._ ”

Sokka looks at him for a long moment, and then casts his eyes to the floor. “That makes more sense, yeah.”

Zuko shuffles ahead of him and peeks around the corner. They creep, as quietly as the footsteps of grown men will allow, up the stairs. Fire crackles just beneath Zuko’s skin, wary of erupting too soon and giving their position away by shining a spotlight on them. 

Halfway up the stairs, at the point of being able to see up over the top step onto the deck, they settle without discussion into matching crouches. Stealth is the name of the game, and they both know it. Even so, Zuko raises a finger to his lips when he turns to look at Sokka. 

Zuko doesn’t make a sound, but he hears a _shh_ anyway. Sokka’s eyes, still locked on his, widen in confusion. He shakes his head infinitesimally, and turns back ahead to peek onto the deck, taking another two silent steps upward. 

He hears him before he sees him.

A voice on his right says, “ _Zuko_?” and he whips his head around to find the source.

“ _Aang_?”

There, taking up most of the deck of their ship like a living fog, is Appa, with Aang hopping from foot to foot beside him. Momo’s pointed ears poke up over the lip of the saddle, but he makes no move to show his face. A well-stuffed travel sack sits on the deck at Aang’s feet, looking like it might burst open at any moment, and things start falling into place in Zuko’s mind.

“What do you mean, _Aang?”_ Beside him, Sokka stands up from his crouch and follows Zuko’s gaze. 

Aang stops hopping, as if too confused to feel the pain of a stubbed toe at the same time. _“Sokka?”_

Zuko uses the banister to haul himself up onto the deck properly. He offers a hand to Sokka without thinking. Sokka doesn’t take it because he doesn’t need it, and he snatches it back before it can look like anything other than an offer of help.

“What’s happening here, exactly?” Sokka asks. He’s standing beside Zuko now instead of behind, and close enough that Zuko can feel the heat of him on his own skin. It’s horribly distracting.

If Aang notices their proximity, though, he doesn’t mention it. He just looks at Zuko with a single befuddled eyebrow raised as he tells Sokka, “Katara said before I dropped her off at the palace that if everything went smoothly, this was about where you’d be by this point in the trip. Why is Zuko here?”

Zuko and Sokka exchange a look. It’s the kind of look that asks a question and answers it in the same instance of locked eyes. The answer is, of course, _just you and me._

“I’m -” Zuko starts, already flailing.

“He’s coming with us,” Sokka says, saving him. Always saving him. “It’s a...working vacation. He’s not coming for political reasons or anything, but he can’t really _turn off_ being the Firelord, so -”

“It was a last minute decision,” Zuko finishes. “We - I - would’ve told you, otherwise.”

It's almost not a lie.

It seems to satisfy Aang, at least long enough for him to hug each of them. He’s nearly as tall as Sokka is now, and Zuko doesn’t know how to process the suddenly obvious fact that he’s going to end up the shortest of them. Aang hasn’t grown into his height yet, though, so his hug is all too-long limbs and strange angles as he grapples with elbows that aren’t where they should be. 

“So where’s Katara?” he asks, barely-controlled arms still flung around Zuko’s shoulders.

“In bed?” Sokka says, his frown marking the question. “Because it’s the middle of the night?”

Aang lets Zuko go. “You’re not in bed.”

“We _were_ ,” Zuko says, and catches a sharp look from Sokka. He adjusts, and continues, “but then someone went and crashed a flying bison on our ship and we had to come make sure we weren’t being invaded by pirates.”

“Why did you have to come together?”

Zuko holds in a laugh and wills himself not to blush, his still drowsy mind that of a fourteen year old, as Sokka saves him once again. “Safety in numbers, Aang. Who knows how many pirates you could’ve turned out to be.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Aang says, and Zuko is wounded by how much he clearly means it. “I just thought you would’ve been expecting me.”

He probably _is_ expected, and that’s why they’re the only ones who came to investigate, but when Zuko tries to remember any discussion of Aang’s apparently scheduled arrival, or any discussion of Aang at all, he comes up blank. Most of what he remembers from the trip so far is Sokka, and when it’s not Sokka it’s the anticipation of Sokka. Maybe he should start paying better attention.

“Come on, we’ll take you down to Katara,” Sokka says. “If she’s slept through all the racket you made I’ll kill her.”

Sokka leads the way below deck, and now Zuko is awake enough to feel self-conscious about greeting Aang wearing pyjamas, and the fact that Sokka’s clearly don’t belong to him. 

Aang doesn’t seem to give it a second thought, though, so maybe it’s not as glaring as he thinks it is. Maybe, if he stops being so aware of how close he is to Sokka, they’ll be in the clear.

“Zuko,” Aang says, when they pass under a lamp at the corner of one corridor and another. “What’s that on your neck?”

Zuko doesn’t know what he’s talking about until Sokka turns to look. He manages to get out, “What’s -” before his eyes land on Zuko’s throat and he shuts his mouth. 

_Maybe_ clearly doesn’t get the same kind of mileage it used to.

Zuko’s hand flies to his throat, to the curve of his neck and shoulder and the ghost of Sokka’s mouth there, and hopes to whatever spirit is listening that the orange glow of the torch covers the furious red of blood rushing to his face.

“That’s, um -” he looks to Sokka for help, and finds none. “We were sparring?”

Aang raises an eyebrow. “You don’t sound sure.”

Sokka, miraculously, finds his voice again. “That’s because he lost.”

Zuko glares at him. “I did _not._ ”

“Did too.” Zuko wants to kiss the smirk right off his mouth. Against all odds, he manages to keep his hands to himself.

They round another corner, and walk right into Katara. Her hair is sleep-messy, a dark cascade against her blue pyjamas, and she rubs blearily at one eye as she asks, “Why are we awake?”

“Katara, perfect,” Sokka says. “When Zuko and I were sparring, who won?”

She blinks, and her eyes flick between them. “Sokka won, but you called it a draw. What’s going on? Am I still asleep?”

Sokka points a finger in Zuko’s face. “I _told_ you!”

“Well, good for you,” Zuko says. “Now move, you’re in the Avatar’s way.”

Sokka takes an exaggerated step closer to him. Close enough that Zuko has to consciously hold his arms at his sides to keep himself from touching him. 

Katara perks up when her eyes land on Aang, and she pushes past Zuko and Sokka to hug him.

“It’s the middle of the night,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

“I was going to meet up with you guys on Kyoshi,” Aang says, “but I saw the ship from the sky and I just thought, why not?”

Katara lets him go. Zuko thinks he looks like he might have something else to say, but the moment he opens his mouth again the words are stolen by a yawn.

“That’s why not,” Sokka says. “How long have you been flying, man?”

“Only, like -” he yawns again “- fourteen, fifteen hours maybe?”

“Let’s get you a bed,” Katara says. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

And there rises a predicament. 

Zuko’s fairly confident that there are no other individual rooms on the ship but his and Sokka and Katara’s. He’s sure Aang would have no problem staying with the crew for a night or two before they reach Kyoshi Island, but he can’t imagine the embarrassment of asking someone to give their spare bunk to the Avatar. He could, theoretically, spend the night in Appa’s saddle, but that seems like a cruel thing to ask of him. So that leaves him...where, exactly? In a sleeping bag on the floor somewhere?

“You can take mine,” Sokka says, and Zuko snaps out of his musings in time to catch the split-second quirk of a smile on his lips. “I’ll share with Zuko, it’s fine.”

Aang eyes him carefully. “Are you sure?”

“Do _you_ want to share with Zuko?” Sokka asks. “He _snores_.”

“I do _n-_ ” Zuko starts to protest, but then Sokka throws him another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it look, and his mind catches up. “I do. I snore. Like an animal.”

“See,” Sokka says. “You don’t want to share with him. I’ll take one for the team.”

“What a hero,” Katara mutters. She loops an arm through Aang’s to guide him. “C’mon, I’m too tired for this.”

And then they’re gone and the door is shut behind them, and Zuko and Sokka are left there in the hallway, in pyjamas and awe.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Sokka says.

Zuko holds Sokka’s face in his hands and kisses him soundly, a single press of lips to surprised lips. “You’re a genius.”

Maybe it’s just the torchlight, but Zuko swears Sokka’s cheeks flush with colour. 

He takes Sokka’s hand and tugs him along with him into hi- _their_ room. Keeps tugging until Sokka drops his boomerang on the floor just inside the door as he closes it behind them, until he falls backward onto the bed and Sokka tumbles down with him, until they’re pressed together everywhere they can reach, until Sokka’s breath mingles with his as their lips meet again, and again, and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's in the tags already but in case anyone missed it next chapter is where we earn that E rating! stay tuned for birthday sex and being in love! going up on valentine's day for all my lonely bitches


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy valentine's day!! have some silly romantic birthday sex as my gift to you :)  
> (warning for alcohol consumption. it's not excessive or heavy in any way, just in case)

On the day their ship docks on Kyoshi Island, Zuko turns twenty years old.

He wakes to Sokka’s kiss of _“Happy birthday, Zuko,”_ to his collarbone, his throat, his jaw, his mouth - but after that, no one brings it up again. Not the crew when he greets them on deck, not Katara at breakfast, not Aang as they stand at the bow of the ship watching Kyoshi Island grow nearer.

He doesn’t mind. It’s nice, even, not to have any fanfare. There’ll be festivities and some sort of banquet, probably, when he returns to the Fire Nation, like there was last year and the years before, but it’s _nice_ not to have that stress this year. He can just stand with his friends looking out at the sea and not have to worry about having the appropriate reactions to the gaudy royal extravagance.

There’s a real chill in the air for the first time since leaving the Fire Nation, enough to make Zuko retreat below deck to dig another layer from his trunk to wear over his regular clothes. He hasn’t even been gone that long when Sokka comes looking for him.

“They’re about to drop the anchors,” he’s saying, and then he freezes in place halfway into the room, eyes wide.

Zuko asks, “What is it?” and Sokka shakes himself out of his daze. 

“It’s nothing,” he says, “just - you’re wearing blue.”

Zuko looks down at himself. He hadn’t really noticed it when he put it on, he was just looking for something a little heavier, but sure enough, his extra robe is a cool sky tone. 

“Huh,” he says. “I guess I am. I wear blue all the time, though.”

Sokka finds his feet and crosses the room to stand in front of him. He fiddles with the fold of the fabric where it crosses Zuko’s torso, eventually coming to a stop and just letting his hands rest there on Zuko’s chest. His eyes shine with something Zuko doesn’t have a name for.

“You don’t,” Sokka says. “But you should.”

There’s a soft smile on his lips, a sweet uptick at the corners that makes Zuko feel like sunshine and garden strolls and berries ripe enough to burst, and he can’t tear his eyes away from it.

Sokka throws a glance over his shoulder to the doorway. When he’s sure it’s clear - Zuko doesn’t really expect it not to be - he turns his gaze back to Zuko and presses a feather-light kiss to his cheek. The pressure is almost nothing, but Zuko still feels it long after Sokka pulls away.

“It’s a good colour on you,” Sokka says. It comes out as a whisper.

This is nice, too; the gentle hands, the stolen kisses, the quiet words meant for only one person to hear. The secrecy is a thrill - Zuko would be a liar if he said it wasn’t - but _this_ is what he wants, to stand in a shaft of sunlight with Sokka’s hands on him and his smile unwavering.

“Come on,” Sokka says. He takes one of Zuko’s hands in his and pulls him toward the door. “We’re taking Appa to the island.”

“Sokka, wait,” Zuko says. They stop in the doorway, fingers still linked.

Sokka looks at him. “Yeah?”

“It won’t be - it won’t be weird, or anything, right? Seeing everyone?” Zuko asks. “Now that we’re - I mean, now -”

“Now that we’re us?” Sokka offers, and his smile broadens.

 _Us._ It’s too small a word for everything Zuko feels for Sokka, too small to encompass everything he wants them to be - but it’ll do. For now, at least. Until they have a chance to talk about what it all means.

(Zuko knows what he _wants_ it to mean, he’s known that since - forever, it feels like. Since a week ago with Sokka crowding him against the guard rail on deck, since their picnic two nights before that, since the day in the gardens when his feelings for Sokka hit him like a ton of bricks, since Sokka’s hand gripping his out the window of a gondola at Boiling Rock three and a half years ago.)

“Yes,” Zuko breathes. “Now that we’re us.”

Sokka’s smile is blinding. It’s the same one Zuko sees every time he closes his eyes.

Sokka squeezes on his fingers and says - no, _promises,_ “It won’t be weird.”

* * *

It’s weird.

It’s - well. It’s not weird like Zuko thought it might be. It’s not weird because of the Zuko-and-Sokka of it all, but it’s definitely still _weird._

Zuko isn’t supposed to be here. He knows that. The strangeness of hearing his name as a question, like he could possibly be anyone but himself, is to be expected, but he could probably do without the incredulous stares from the Kyoshi Warriors he hasn’t met yet.

The surprise of strangers seeing the Firelord for the first time isn’t the weird part, though. The weird part is Katara dragging Suki away for a private conversation the minute she’s out of Appa’s saddle, before anyone else even has a chance to greet her.

He points them out to Sokka as they’re disembarking. “What’s that about?”

Sokka lands heavily on the ground, kicking up dust. He offers his hand up for Zuko to take hold of on his way down. He doesn’t need it - if anything, he should be helping Sokka, though his leg hasn’t bothered him in months - but he takes it anyway. Any excuse.

“Why would I know?” Sokka asks.

“It’s your sister,” Zuko says. He makes it to the ground safely, and if he lets his hand linger in Sokka's for a moment too long, that’s his business. “ _And_ your ex-girlfriend. If anyone should know, it’s you.”

Sokka laughs, but Zuko’s not sure what’s funny.

Before he can ask, though, Aang floats down to join them. Zuko drops Sokka’s hand.

“Aang,” Zuko says. “What’s Katara talking to Suki about?”

Aang turns to look in the direction he points, to Katara and Suki with their heads bowed close together and their backs turned. It’s impossible to know what she’s saying, but Katara’s gesturing in a way that makes Zuko think she’s _listing_ things, which only serves to confuse him more.

“Oh,” Aang says, “it’s probably about the p-”

“Hey!” Sokka exclaims. “Is that Ty Lee? Zuko, you should go say hi!”

Zuko looks at him, and he’s pointing to the crowd of Kyoshi Warriors hovering - it’s hard to tell if they’re invited into the conversation, but they all appear to be eavesdropping at the very least - by Suki and Katara, but he’s not looking that direction. Instead, Sokka’s eyes are on Aang, his stare pointed and serious.

“Is everything -” Zuko pauses for a moment to assess the scene, Sokka glaring daggers and Aang’s mouth snapping into a shameful straight line “- okay?”

Sokka looks at him then, and his eyes soften, the way they always do. The way they always have. How Zuko managed to go all this time - how long, exactly, he doesn’t know, but he’s sure he’ll find out - without noticing and connecting the dots, he’ll never know.

And then Sokka shoves his shoulder, pushes him in the direction of the one Kyoshi Warrior who looks like she’d prefer to be standing on her hands instead of her feet. “Go say hello. We’ll catch up.”

Zuko frowns at him, but Sokka just smiles, innocent and unassuming.

As he walks away, he hears Sokka hiss, _“What part of su-”_ but he misses the end of the question - accusation? - when he finally catches Ty Lee’s eye and she bounds over to him. She takes a final leap toward him, her hug more of a _crash_ than an embrace.

It’s been years, and still, he’s not used to this. He’s not sure Ty Lee is something one _can_ get used to.

“It’s nice to see you,” he says, and he finds himself grinning into the space over her shoulder. 

She lets him go, and drops into the lowest bow he’s ever seen. “Firelord Zuko.”

Zuko feels heat flare in his face. She's almost worse than Uncle. 

“Ty Lee,” he huffs, “we’ve talked about this.”

She snaps back up, and Zuko might worry about the effect the movement has on her back if she were anyone else in the world. Her smile is radiant and scheming.

“I know,” she says. “But you’re cute when you blush.”

_“Ty Lee.”_

She laughs, and he flushes deeper. 

“What are you even doing here, Zuko?” she asks. Then, straightening her uniform, she corrects herself. “Firelord Zuko. Or is it Your Highness? Your Majesty?”

“Just Zuko is fine,” he assures her, like they haven’t known each other their whole lives. “And it’s - I’m -”

“What, the Firelord can’t take a vacation now?” Sokka appears at his elbow, warm and buoyant and apparently finished accosting the Avatar for now.

Zuko rolls his eyes, and instead of arriving back on Ty Lee, they land on Sokka’s easy smile, drawn to him like a compass to true north. He feels shy suddenly, and his gaze drops to the ground. He glances back up, and Ty Lee is wrapping Sokka in a hug, and - that’s new. He’s not sure when that happened. Probably around the same time Sokka came back from a visit to Kyoshi with the news that Ty Lee and Suki were officially _oogie._

Ty Lee lets Sokka go, and asks about life in the Fire Nation and their journey so far - she doesn’t mention Zuko’s birthday, either, though he’s sure she remembers it.

At some point in their conversation, Suki frees herself from Katara and wanders over, and Ty Lee takes that as her cue to excuse herself. Suki bows to Zuko, and he rolls his eyes while Sokka laughs at him, and then she pulls them both in for a hug.

“It’s been too long,” she says. She lets them go, and points a finger to Zuko’s chest. “You don’t write enough.”

Sometimes it feels like all he does is write, but he knows what she means. He rubs at the back of his neck and tells her, “I’ll try harder.”

“Do you think you can try to plan your vacations in advance, too?” she asks. “We’re not exactly set up to host the _Firelord_ at the moment.”

Zuko gestures to the empty space above his head. “No hairpiece. I’m not the Firelord right now.”

“Sure,” Suki says. “And when I’m not caked in face paint I forget how to kick your ass.”

“Suki,” Sokka says, his voice full of a fondness that makes Zuko’s chest ache, “leave the poor Firelord alone. I asked him to come, he’s basically my luggage.”

Suki laughs, loud and melodic. Zuko has _missed_ that sound. She loops an arm through his, and for a brief, shining moment he feels special and _chosen,_ until she loops her other one through Sokka’s and he’s not uniquely in her favour anymore.

“C’mon,” she says, and marches them away from the crowd.

“Where are we going?” Zuko asks. “Is this an assassination?”

“I thought you weren’t the Firelord today?”

“I’m not,” he says, “but Sokka’s still an ambassador. _And_ next in line to be Chief -”

“I think that might technically be Bato, actually,” Sokka says. “I don’t know. Dad’s last letter was really vague.”

Suki sighs. “I’m not assassinating you. Either of you.”

“Then _where_ are you taking us?”

Suki just grins, and doesn’t say a word.

She takes them to see the elephant koi.

Zuko’s seen them before, of course - this isn’t his first trip to Kyoshi, after all - but he’s always taken aback by just how _big_ they are. Their scales glimmer in shades of orange and red and gold, and sometimes, when the light catches them just right and Zuko looks at them just wrong, they look like fire under the water.

It’s not weird with Suki. Not like it is with Katara, who always seems to be appraising his and Sokka’s every move, calculating and watchful.

They don’t act like a - a couple, or whatever it is they are, because they’re still keeping that to themselves for as long as they can, but it’s not _weird_. It’s a little difficult, maybe, and definitely frustrating, not being able to reach over and touch Sokka’s hand, or his cheek, or his lips, but it’s not painful in the way that it used to be, before they had this. Whatever they have. It’s because there’s no uncertainty in the restraint, Zuko realises. He _knows_ he’ll get to have those touches later, he knows Sokka wants them as much as he does, he knows he won’t be turned away.

With just the three of them, it’s easy. 

Suki comes to the palace a few times a year - sometimes in an official capacity, usually not - and every time, it’s like she never left. Zuko keeps trying to offer her a job, for no reason other than to keep her near, but he knows she’s needed here on the island to help with rebuilding and training the Warriors. There’s not much need for them now that the war is over, but Suki hates the idea of her girls getting sloppy.

(When she tells them this, sitting on the rocks with their toes dangling in the water, Zuko thinks of Ty Lee, and how she’d been right by Suki’s side when they landed, and stayed there until he’d caught her eye. He wonders if maybe he should offer her a job, too, to sweeten the deal for Suki.)

They stay there for hours, just watching the elephant koi, talking and teasing and laughing at each other when the waves at their feet rise too high too quickly and one of them yelps.

It’s comfortable, and familiar, so when the sun sinks low in the sky and Suki asks Zuko, “Are there any new _ladies_ in your life since I last saw you?” the answer comes out without a struggle.

“No,” he says. “I’m gay.”

Suki barely blinks. “Oh. Is that - I mean, I thought in the Fire Nation -”

“We’re working on it,” Zuko assures her. “Working on it is actually the reason I wanted to get away. Well - part of the reason.”

Sokka, beside him, shifts minutely closer. The tips of his fingers brush against Zuko’s, and _oh,_ that’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because it makes Zuko want to look at him, and if he looks at him right now, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep himself in check.

So he looks at Suki instead, and she smiles at him, all roses and sunset glow.

“Good,” she says. “I’m glad. After everything - you deserve a break, Zuko. If anyone’s earned a little peace and quiet, it’s you.”

“Yeah, peace and quiet,” Sokka says. “That’s why I’m taking him to the Water Tribe unification talks.”

“I bet that’ll be a riot,” Suki laughs. “Trying to tell cold shoulders from shoulders that are just cold.”

Zuko stares out ahead and manages to catch the precise moment the sun kisses the horizon. The water is coloured the same as the elephant koi, the shadows they cast as they crest the surface dramatic and elongated by the change in light.

“I think it’s about time we head back,” Suki says. “What do you say, Sokka, d’you think they’ve had long enough?”

“It’d be kind of embarrassing if they haven’t,” Sokka says.

Zuko looks at him, and forces himself to ignore the way the light warms his smile. “Long enough for what? Who?”

Suki starts to move on his other side, so he snaps a look over at her. Standing, she offers him a hand up.

“What’s going on?” Zuko asks. He takes her hand and she pulls him to his feet with more strength than should reasonably fit in a person her size.

“All in good time, Your Highness,” she tells him.

He turns to look at Sokka again, and notices a glimmer of _something_ in his eyes, the same kind of something he usually sees in Katara’s. He asks again, “What’s going on?” 

“You’ll see,” Sokka says. He doesn’t need it, but he takes Zuko’s hand on his way to his feet, and keeps hold of it as he pulls Zuko away from the shore. “C’mon, Firelord, it’s a long walk back to town.”

Zuko’s skin sings where Sokka’s fingers brush against his wrist. It’s almost enough to distract him from the fact that there’s a secret being kept from him. Almost.

* * *

It’s just about dark by the time they make it back to the village, but not all that late yet. They turn a corner on one dusky street and suddenly they’re under blazing lamplight, drowning out the stars peeking through the blanket of clouds above them.

They’ve been quiet on the walk, mostly. Zuko got tired of asking questions once it became apparent that Sokka’s and Suki’s lips were sealed, and so they lapsed into a comfortable silence.

They only stop once, at a stall in the market square for a quick dinner of - unnamed and therefore almost _definitely_ something cute and cuddly - meat on a stick. Sokka goes at his like he’s been deprived his entire life, and Zuko has to look away from him when something just to the left of hunger starts to wake in his gut. He tries to focus on steadying the flicker of the streetlights around himself, but distracting from a distraction is easier said than done.

Suki leads them to a house just uphill from the Warriors’ training hall, overlooking the rest of the village with wide, watchful windows. This is where the Warriors live, that much is obvious from the moment they step inside, judging from the stack of sandals in the foyer, the portrait of Kyoshi hanging over the staircase, the mingling scents of training sweat and homeliness. It’s not where Zuko usually stays when he visits, but he guesses that since he’s not here in an official capacity - or even an expected one - Suki was right about not being prepared to host him and his hairpiece this time around. 

This is nicer than the fancy place they give the Firelord, now that he thinks about it. It’s more comfortable. He doesn’t feel like an imposition here, even though he’s sure he is. This place is lived in and living, not like the stiff walls of the mayor’s guesthouse and how they sometimes feel like a cage.

It’s also far quieter than Zuko expects of a place that houses a group of elite warriors. It’s almost _too_ quiet, until he remembers that the street lamps being lit does not make it nighttime, so there’s probably just no one home.

The stairs creak beneath their feet as Suki says, “I’ll show you to your rooms if you want to freshen up a little.”

 _Freshen up for what,_ Zuko thinks, but doesn’t say anything.

“Sokka, you can take your usual,” she continues, and something bitter and morose spikes through Zuko as he realises they won’t be sleeping together tonight. “I’ll probably never hear the end of it from whoever gave up their room for the night, but there should be something set up for you, too, Zuko.”

“I really don’t mind sharing,” Zuko says. He throws a glance to Sokka, and finds him already looking back.

“Nonsense,” Suki insists. “I’m not gonna force the Firelord to mingle with us regular folk. You’re already slumming it enough as it is, staying down here instead of away in your fancy castle up in the hills.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it a _castle._ ”

They turn onto the landing and Suki quirks an eyebrow at him. “Oh, sorry, should we have rebuilt it bigger? It’s just that after it _burned down_ -”

“Suki,” Zuko says, “I will sleep on the ground outside.”

“You’ll sleep where I tell you to sleep.”

Zuko’s mouth snaps shut, and Sokka laughs at him, so he shoves at his shoulder and whispers, “Like you’re so brave.”

Suki herds Sokka into one of the rooms along the hallway before he can answer. Zuko trails along after her as she ducks her head into some of the others, before finally stopping at a room two doors diagonally from Sokka’s.

“Ah,” she says. “Found you.”

She steps aside and lets him in. At first glance this room looks the same as all the others - sparse decoration, soft taupe sheets on the bed, light curtains floating with a breeze from the open window - until he spots one of his bags from the ship at the foot of the bed.

“There’s a little campfire out back,” Suki says. “Sokka’ll show you. Come find me when you’re done with - powdering your nose or whatever.”

“Okay,” Zuko blinks at her. “Oh - are you leaving now?”

Suki huffs a short laugh. “I know we’re close, Zuko, but I don’t need to see you changing. I already know I like girls, thanks.”

She closes the door behind herself as she leaves, and a moment later the stairs are creaking again. Not as badly as they did with the addition of two grown men, but enough that Zuko can hear it through the door.

He didn't pay a lot of attention to the bag when he grabbed it on the ship, just enough to know he had what he needed, but looking through it now, it's the kind of emergency overnight kit only Uncle would pack - a toothbrush, fancily embroidered pyjamas, a jar of moonpeach-infused hand cream, three different outfit choices for the following day, and a teapot. He scoffs at first, before he thinks of the care Uncle clearly put into making sure he had everything he might need, and he feels a pang of fondness in his chest.

He’s tying the sash on a fresh tunic - blue trimmed with white, it might’ve come from Sokka’s own wardrobe if not for the fact that it actually _fits_ him - when the door clicks open again, and Sokka slips into the room. Zuko glances up to greet him, and pauses.

Sokka leans against the door, gesturing to Zuko’s hands frozen at his waist, and asks, “You need some help?”

Zuko can’t seem to find his voice. His words are stuck in his throat, and his eyes are stuck on the red flowers stitched into the breast of Sokka’s tunic and the single thin braid tied in with the rest of his wolf tail, so he just nods. Sokka pushes off from the door and takes a couple of steps to stand closer to him. 

_Too close,_ Zuko thinks. _Not close enough._

Sokka makes quick work of the sash, tucking the ends neatly into the folds with two fingertips. He stays there for a moment, fingertips stuck between the tightly wrapped sash and the smooth fabric of Zuko’s tunic. For a moment Zuko thinks he might be trapped, until Sokka uses his own handiwork to tug him closer, his free hand coming up to twirl through a strand of Zuko’s hair.

Sokka kisses him once, scorching and dark and firm. A surprised sound rips itself from Zuko’s throat.

Zuko can still feel him on his lips when Sokka whispers, “I have wanted to do that _all day._ ”

Sokka presses his forehead against Zuko’s and, oddly, it feels more intimate than any kiss they’ve shared.

“You look nice,” Zuko says. 

When Sokka doesn’t say anything, just smiles, Zuko pulls back to look him in the eye.

“Sokka,” he says, “why do you look nice?”

Sokka pouts at him. “I don’t always look nice?”

“Don’t be cute.”

“I can’t help it,” Sokka says, and flashes him a grin. 

Zuko rolls his eyes - well. He tries to. He sort of forgets _how_ when Sokka cups his face in his hands and kisses him again. It’s gentle, nothing too strenuous, but there’s a kind of heat in it, a promise of _something more._

Sokka breaks away, and Zuko wants to chase him, drag him back in and take that _something more_ hard and fast before anyone else can find it. 

But he doesn’t, because Sokka steps away from him, a hint of a smile sitting crooked and wicked on his mouth, as he says, “C’mon, Jerklord. Let’s go find out why I look nice.”

“So there _is_ a reason!”

Sokka laughs, takes his hand and pulls him to the door. He doesn’t let it drop again until they’re down the stairs, and then he stays close enough that their shoulders brush on every other step as he leads them through the kitchen to the back door. Something hums just below the surface of Zuko’s skin every time their hands touch.

Sokka whispers, “Stay cool.”

Zuko looks at him. “What’s that suppo-”

Sokka opens the back door and shoves him gently outside.

There’s the campfire at the end of the garden, probably still too close to the house to be entirely safe, some logs in the grass around it that must be benches, and Zuko can just about make out the vague shapes crouched behind the furniture as people. Someone whisper-shouts _“Now!”_ and he can feel his own fist curling at his side on instinct, his feet shifting cautiously on the stoop, ready to -

_“Happy birthday, Zuko!”_

The cry is a chorus, followed by cheers and applause, and someone dashes up through the grass too fast for him to make out who they are, and then he’s wrapped in arms strong enough to break him in two.

He stumbles backwards, nearly swept off his feet by the impact, and he hears Sokka laughing somewhere behind him, and then Katara - of course it’s Katara - says into his ear, “You didn’t think we’d forget, did you?”

He blinks over her shoulder, and suddenly he can see everything - every _one_ \- clearly. There are tall torches dotted along the edge of the yard and paper lanterns strung up between them, all now lit and illuminating the beaming faces of his friends. His family. 

“What is all this?” he asks, still dazed.

Katara releases him from her grasp and grins at him. Her eyes dart to Sokka beside them. He drops a hand onto Zuko’s shoulder, and even through the fabric, he can feel the heat of it. 

“I know you hate surprises,” Sokka says, and he sounds a lot closer than Zuko thought he was, “but I thought you might like this one.”

Zuko glances up at him, at his radiant smile and his eyes shining blue and amber in the torchlight, and he feels - too much. It’s overwhelming. Too big for his body to hold, at least for very long.

Sokka’s hand drifts from his shoulder to the back of his neck hidden under his hair, and trails down the notches of his spine until it reaches the middle of his back. It’s not the kind of touch that exists between _just friends,_ and they both know it, but Zuko doesn’t _care._

He wants this and every other touch Sokka might offer him, just like he wants the shiver that runs down his spine as Sokka leans in even closer to say, "Happy birthday, Zuko."

He says it the exact same way he did this morning, when it was just them in the pale glow of dawn, and it takes everything Zuko has not to kiss him right then and there, to hell with _just you and me._

Katara takes his hand and pulls him back to the rest of the group with her. There’s barely a dozen people, and Zuko only really knows about half of them, but they make enough noise that they could easily be mistaken for a small riot. He gets hugs and well wishes from everyone, and only some of them are awkward.

There are no gifts, because this was never supposed to happen in the first place, but that’s fine. If Zuko were at the palace now, he’d be in his third or fourth consecutive hour of fending off wealthy nobles trying to buy his affection and approval. It’s nice to be around people who know they already have it.

He pulls Suki aside after a while and asks her, “How did this happen?”

She swallows a bite of whatever it is she’s eating - some pastry or other from the refreshments table, up by the house away from the fire - and says, “You remember I was talking to Katara when you guys arrived?”

“Yeah?”

“She put this all together,” Suki says. “Her and Sokka. And Aang, I guess, but you know what he’s like with surprises - anyway, she asked if she could have my girls for the day to fix the place up, and I got distraction duty.”

“Distraction duty,” Zuko echoes.

“You think I made you walk half the length of the Island just to sit and look at some _fish?”_

Zuko glances around at the smiling faces and lively conversations and drinks spilling in wildly gesturing hands. Katara gives him a small wave from the other side of the lawn, the curl of her mouth sheepish and coy.

“Katara really did all this?” Zuko asks. “For me?”

“It was Sokka’s idea,” Suki says, her voice pitched a little quieter. “But if I’m honest, most of this stuff is just leftover from when Mai came down here for her birthday last month. I don’t think we even moved the benches.”

“You said - Sokka’s idea?”

Suki laughs. “Don’t act so surprised, Zuko.”

“I’m not, it’s just -” Zuko trails off, and his eyes wander away from Suki’s, to find Sokka talking to Ty Lee and trying not to hit his head on one of the low-hanging lanterns. Sokka glances over then and meets his eye, his smile softening and his cheeks flushing just enough that Zuko can see it. He bows his head shyly, chin tucked against his chest, and Zuko feels about ready to burst. “I can’t believe he managed to keep it from me.”

“I don’t know,” Suki hums. “That boy knows how to keep a secret when he wants to.”

Zuko takes a second to consider the morning they left for the South Pole, and how he really hadn’t known anything about Sokka’s feelings until Katara more or less spelled them out for him - and now, with everything that’s come after it, maybe Suki doesn’t know how right she is.

One of the Warriors - Zuko was told her name at some point tonight, but he cannot remember it for the life of him - approaches. She whispers something to Suki, and Suki whispers something back, and then she’s being directed away.

“Duty calls,” she says to Zuko. “I’ll catch you later, old man.”

“I’m _twenty.”_

She calls, “Sure thing, Gramps,” over her shoulder, and then she’s gone.

And that’s sort of how the night goes, in fits and starts of playful interactions that last as long as it takes for one or both parties to be whisked away by someone else. There are snacks and bad jokes and probably more drinks than are strictly necessary, but mostly, for Zuko, there’s Sokka.

There’s Sokka, on the other side of the campfire, talking to Aang but unable to take his eyes off Zuko.

There's Sokka, and the plausible deniability of brushed fingers as he takes Zuko's cup to refill it the moment it runs empty. 

There's Sokka, still out of reach at the other end of the bench with Ty Lee and Suki lodged between them, but closer than he was before and making Zuko's insides burn just from the proximity. 

Zuko spends the whole night painfully, furiously aware of him, even when the alcohol in his system makes him slightly _less_ aware of other things. It's sending him out of his mind - every catch of white-hot eye contact, every casual touch on their way past each other, every gaping inch of space between them. Ty Lee giggles something into Suki's ear, and he's starting to think that if he doesn't find a private moment in a dark room sometime soon, he's going to cause an international incident.

This time, when Sokka offers to top up his drink, Zuko follows him to the refreshments table instead of just enjoying the view as he walks past. There’s no one else over on this side of the garden, and this far from the fire the night is almost cold.

Zuko leans against the table while Sokka pours generously from one of the brightly coloured bottles on display. He holds the cork between his teeth, and Zuko decides, _fuck it,_ it’s his birthday. If he wants to stare at Sokka’s mouth, who’s going to tell him no?

The wind kicks up slightly, and Zuko shivers with the chill of it.

Sokka jams the cork back in the bottle. “Are you seriously _cold_ right now?”

“Maybe,” Zuko says, and Sokka gives him a look. “Fine, yes, I’m cold. I live in a volcano.”

“We’re going to the South Pole, Zuko. If you think _this_ is cold -” Sokka trails off. For a moment he just looks at Zuko without any real expression at all, and then something happens. There’s a shift, somewhere in his brain, and Zuko can see it the moment it happens.

“What? What’s that face for?”

“Do you, um -” his tongue peeks out to wet his bottom lip, “do you want to go inside? And get warm?”

Zuko pushes off from the table and takes a tiny side-step toward him. They’re closer now than they’ve been all night, and Zuko can feel that itch under his skin again, and it’s not enough. It’s not _enough._

“If I do, will you come with me?” he asks. Something - adrenaline, nervousness, _hunger_ \- jolts through him when Sokka's eyes meet his.

Sokka’s face breaks into the kind of smile Zuko only ever sees on him when they’re sparring, all shark teeth and arrogant charm. “Oh, sweetheart, that was always the plan.”

Zuko laughs, and maybe he wasn’t supposed to, but Sokka joins him, and the tension between them breaks. 

“That was so bad,” Sokka guffaws. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. Really not my best material.”

“I don’t know,” Zuko says, “it kind of worked for me.”

“Really? _That’s_ what does it for you?”

“I said _kind of -_ ”

“Hey, no take-backs!”

Zuko rolls his eyes, “What are you, eight?”

Sokka laughs again, a high, bubbly thing, and hangs his head. He doesn’t say anything for a while, just stands there with that alcohol-loose smile on his face. Then, so quietly Zuko barely hears it, “I want to kiss you so bad right now.”

It’s not the most scandalous thing he’s ever said - it’s not even the worst thing he’s said in the last five minutes - but the effect it has on Zuko is instantaneous. If a modest admission like that is enough to send Zuko’s blood rushing to his face and - ahem - _elsewhere,_ and make his fingers twitch with the need to reach out and touch, then who knows how he’ll react to something more salacious. 

But he’s got that buzzing in his bones, the one the only ever wakes for Sokka, so he reaches out a tentative hand and hooks his index finger around Sokka’s and whispers, “Let’s go inside.”

He spares a glance toward the group still huddled around the campfire, and it looks like no one’s even noticed they’re gone. Aang is snoring gently with his head on Katara’s shoulder while she watches Ty Lee and Suki argue over something. Zuko and Sokka could disappear now and no one would know.

So they do.

It’s late enough that most of the actual residents of this house have turned in for the night, so when Zuko and Sokka slip in through the back door, drinks left abandoned on the table, the kitchen is only lit by what pours in through the windows from the fire outside. Zuko finds the rest of Sokka’s hand, knitting their fingers together, and lets him take the lead through the kitchen, the dining room, up the stairs.

One step halfway up makes a terrible, pained noise, and Zuko has to hold a hand over his mouth to stop his laughter at Sokka’s surprise from waking the whole house.

Sokka turns to shush him, and the step groans again, and Zuko drops his hand to steady himself on the banister.

“Asshole,” Sokka says, and then he ducks down and presses his mouth to Zuko’s. And it _is_ his mouth - there’s no plush pillow of lips in this kiss, it’s just mouth and teeth and heat and _now._

Zuko’s hands fly to the sides of Sokka’s face as he rocks up onto his toes to meet him, deeper and harsher and more urgent, and the damn stair creaks again, even louder this time.

Sokka tears out of the kiss with a frustrated sigh. “How do they _live_ like this?”

“Probably by not making out on the stairs,” Zuko says.

 _“Asshole,”_ Sokka says again, but he’s grinning that wicked grin of his, and his eyes are glued to Zuko’s mouth. 

He takes Zuko’s hand again without a word, and they manage to reach the top of the stairs without further incident. It’s an impressive feat, Zuko thinks, given that neither of them can go more than a couple of seconds without stumbling over the other and then laughing at him for being annoyed about it.

There’s an awkward jut of unused space just before the long hallway, barely an alcove, and that’s where Zuko finds himself being herded the moment they’re clear of the stairs. Sokka’s hands are everywhere - on his hips, his waist, snaking around to the small of his back - and then so is his mouth, and Zuko swears he can feel both their heartbeats in his own chest.

Sokka kisses like he’s starving for it, like he exists for the almost-sting of Zuko’s teeth catching his bottom lip and nothing else, like he doesn’t want to breathe ever again.

Slowly, slowly, Zuko remembers that kiss from earlier, the one that promised without words _later_ and _something more._

Well, he thinks, it’s later now, and this feels a lot like _something more._

Sokka tastes like cherry wine, and he makes a sound like he’s wounded when Zuko’s nails scratch at the nape of his neck, a half-gasped hiss from the back of his throat. They’re flush against each other, Zuko’s back melting into the wall behind him, and he can’t get _close_ enough. 

There is no _close enough,_ at least not here, and not with this much fabric between them still. And even then, if they lose the barriers - anticipation shoots up from the base of Zuko’s spine at the thought of it - it won’t be enough, because Zuko could crawl under Sokka’s skin and still want to be _closer._

But he’s not going to get his _closer,_ his _something more,_ standing here pressed into a corner. And he _needs_ it now, it’s more than just wanting, it’s an ache building in every part of him Sokka touches. 

His hands go to Sokka’s chest, to the delicate stitching of his tunic, and he pushes his way out from the wall. 

They separate, just far enough for Zuko to see Sokka’s eyes go wide in surprise and - and there’s concern in there too, making them both gentler for a moment, softening the hands that refuse to leave each other’s bodies.

“Did I -” Sokka rasps, “I mean, is this - are _you_ \- okay?”

Zuko loves him. He's smiling, faintly, with that same shy kindness that Zuko fell for years ago, and Zuko loves him. He can't say that, because they've barely been _this_ for a week and even he knows that's too soon, and if he tries it'll choke him, but he does. He loves him.

So instead, he touches Sokka's face and breathes _"Yes,"_ and kisses him, long and slow and reverent like he deserves.

When they part, Sokka's eyelashes flutter and he just - stands there, dazed. He leans into Zuko's hand, covering it with his own, and presses his lips gently to the palm. It's such a sweet gesture, so shockingly opposite to the fever pitch of a moment ago, that Zuko gasps.

The sound of it breaks something in Sokka, or maybe awakens it, because now there's that ravenous look in his eyes again, and he’s leading Zuko down the long hallway by the wrist and asking him - telling him? - to, “Come with me, Your Highness.”

Zuko hates that title, but there’s something about the way it rolls off Sokka’s tongue - like Zuko isn’t a ruler, he’s someone to be served. 

They stumble for a moment outside Sokka’s door, when Zuko stops and Sokka keeps going towards Zuko’s room. Zuko nearly loses his footing trying to catch up with him, staggering to regain it while Sokka stifles his laughter. Sokka’s mouth is still in the shape of his smile when they reach the door and Zuko presses him against it to kiss him. Sokka fumbles blindly for the knob, both of them tumbling almost to the floor when he finds it and swings the door open.

The door is closed again just as quickly, and this time Zuko is the one crowded against it, Sokka’s breath hot on his lips and his hands even hotter everywhere they can reach. Zuko reaches behind Sokka’s head and tugs his hair free from its elastic. Sokka lets out a truly undignified sound when Zuko’s fingers scrape along his scalp, so he does it again and again and again, until Sokka trails a hand down his side, past his waist and his hips and settling at his ass and dragging him agonisingly closer, and all Zuko can do is pant into his mouth and hope his legs don’t give out.

Sokka’s hand squeezes, just the barest amount of pressure, and Zuko chokes on a moan. 

Sokka pulls away to catch his breath, and he looks _wrecked._ His hair is loose and unruly from Zuko’s hands in it, his lips are kiss-swollen and spit-slick, his eyes are wild and rapt as they roam over Zuko.

“I -” he starts, and then stops.

“Yeah,” Zuko says, breathless. “Me too.”

Sokka laughs, and Zuko can feel the rumble of it everywhere their bodies are still pressed together. “You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead, what were you going to say?”

Sokka splutters for a moment, no words coming to him as he opens and closes his mouth, struggling.

“That’s not the point,” he says, finally, and when Zuko huffs a laugh, he just looks at him.

Sokka looks and looks and looks, and his arms curl around Zuko’s waist, and then he buries his smile against Zuko’s neck and says, “You have no idea what you do to me.”

“So show me,” Zuko says. 

He doesn’t know where it comes from - he’s never been that forward with anyone, ever - but it doesn’t feel wrong. In fact, when Sokka groans against his skin and sucks hot, wet kisses along his throat, it feels all kinds of right.

“Tell me what you want, Zuko,” Sokka says. “Anything.”

_“You.”_

It’s the first thing Zuko thinks, and then it’s the only thing he _can_ think, so he says it.

Sokka pulls back again, and Zuko aches at the loss of his lips. He moves one hand from around Zuko’s waist to cup the side of his face and traces the edge of the scar with his thumb.

Then he says, in a voice like absolution, “I’m already yours.”

Something in Zuko shatters. 

Call it resolve, or civility, or any other damn name under the sun, it doesn’t matter. It’s gone, whatever it is that’s holding him together. He surges forward, all tongue and teeth and grinding hips and tension coiling at the base of his spine.

Sokka hisses, _“Fuck,”_ into his mouth, and uses the hand still wrapped at Zuko’s waist to keep him close as he stumbles backward toward the bed. It’s an awkward little shuffle, and their kiss breaks more than once to leave room for laughter. 

Sokka turns his head to see where he’s going. The twist of his body aligns their hips just-so, and Zuko sees stars.

He gasps a quiet little _“oh,”_ and the lamp in the corner flares to life.

It startles them both into stillness, and then the dots connect and Sokka _giggles._

“Stop,” Zuko pleads. He tries to silence him with another kiss, but Sokka dodges him, his laughter turning manic.

“I’m sorry,” Sokka says, though he doesn’t sound it, “it’s just - that’s the second time that’s happened. And we haven’t even _done_ anything yet.”

And that’s true, but it’s also true that Sokka has unknowingly been lighting fires inside of Zuko for three years. It was just a matter of time before they started setting real ones.

“What do you want me to say, Sokka? I _burn_ for you?”

Sokka knocks him on the shoulder. “That was pretty good.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Sokka concedes, “but I’m trying to get you naked, so -”

Zuko leans into him, and chuckles for the first time in his entire life. The tension is still there in the pit of his stomach, and he’s still aching to touch and be touched, and when he breathes in the scent of Sokka - sweat and cherry wine and anticipation - _need_ explodes inside him, violent and urgent in a way that's almost tangible.

He runs his hands over Sokka’s chest, admiring the intricate detail of the flowers, stark red against blue. He bites a kiss onto Sokka’s jaw and says, “This _does_ look really nice on you.”

Sokka smirks, “But it’d look better on your floor?”

“Maybe,” Zuko says. “I don’t know. I’d have to see it.”

It happens faster than Zuko expects. It’s like - one second he’s looking at Sokka and his eyes that hold both a dare and the acceptance of one, and then he blinks, and Sokka’s stepping back over his own belt and shucking his tunic over his head. He drops it to the floor in a very pointed way, and Zuko follows the movement of it, just _stares_ until he remembers that if that’s on the floor, there’s definitely something better to look at.

Sokka asks, “Well?” and Zuko’s eyes snap up to meet his.

“It, um.” Zuko swallows, his eyes leaving Sokka’s to roam over the obscene expanse of his bare chest. “Yes.”

Sokka barks a laugh. He steps forward, closing the distance between them again, and holds the side of Zuko’s face as he kisses him once, twice, so many times Zuko loses count. He slips two fingers under the folds of Zuko’s sash, tentatively, and doesn’t move.

He asks against Zuko’s lips, “Is this okay?”

Zuko nods, their lips brushing again as he does it, and Sokka swallows the sound of his _“Yes.”_

Zuko breathes into Sokka’s mouth and clings to his shoulders as he fumbles with the fabric, hands nowhere near as sure as they’d been when he tied it earlier. Zuko wishes he’s worn something else, anything else, so they could skip this step and he could just get Sokka’s hands on him.

The sash drops to the floor. Zuko’s tunic falls open. Two sighs of relief echo through the room.

“Can I -”

Zuko cuts him off before he can finish, a whisper of _“Please,”_ that comes out a whine, and Sokka doesn’t need to be asked twice.

He starts at Zuko’s sides, a careful touch that still manages to knock the air from Zuko’s lungs, before moving up, up, up, past his ribs and over his pectoral muscles to his shoulders, where he dips his hands under the fabric of Zuko’s tunic and slides it down off his arms. It hits the floor somewhere behind him, and Zuko sighs again, lost in the feeling of Sokka’s hands - on his skin, tangled in his hair, ghosting along the band of his trousers. Sokka’s hands settle again on his back, one between his shoulder blades and the other at the base of his spine, the tip of one finger dipping experimentally past the fabric, as their lips meet again.

Zuko loops his arms around Sokka’s neck, his back arching and the black of the inside of his eyelids turning to constellations as their hips grind together once more. Sokka is hard against him, and he wants - he just _wants._ He wants to touch, to taste, to hear the sounds Sokka makes when he falls apart, to know if they’re different to the ones that escape him now as Zuko rolls his hips again.

 _“Sokka,”_ he urges, and earns himself a moan for it. “Sokka, I -”

“Anything,” Sokka says, breathless. “Anything.”

And Zuko knows he means it, which is the most exhilarating part. He could ask for the sun, and Sokka would turn himself to ash trying to pluck it from the sky for him.

“I’m -” he starts, but doesn't know where to take it, so he tries again. “The - the bed.”

“Yeah. Yes,” Sokka says. “That’s - good. Yeah.”

They separate, and Zuko takes the last couple of steps to the bed. Sokka tries to follow him, but he gets caught in the heap of clothing at his feet, stumbling until he finally slips. He collides with Zuko and they crash, winded, onto the mattress. Zuko can barely breathe, and it’s impossible to tell it it’s from the weight of Sokka on top of him or the sudden fit of laughter that takes over both of them.

“That’s one way to do it, I guess,” Sokka huffs, his breath a hot puff of air on Zuko’s collarbone.

“Come here,” Zuko says, and uses a hand on Sokka’s jaw to guide his mouth up to meet him. Sokka holds himself up on strong arms on either side of Zuko’s head, Zuko’s legs spreading to give him a place to put his, and - they fit. They fit together so well that Zuko thinks it’s insane they don’t spend all their time like this.

Sokka lifts one of his hands, balancing on just the one now, and drags it down Zuko’s chest, scorching him from the hollow of his throat to his navel and lower. He hovers there, one finger caught in the drawstring of his trousers, waiting. Asking permission.

So Zuko gives it. He breaks their kiss, pushes Sokka’s face away so he can look him in the eye when he pants, _“Touch me.”_

Sokka cups him through the fabric, digging the heel of his hand down, and Zuko arches up to meet him, practically purring at the friction. He kisses the corner of Zuko’s open mouth, then his jaw, along his throat - he pauses to bite matching marks on either side of his collar - and down his sternum. Zuko’s chest heaves, not enough air in the world to save him from the precise pleasure of Sokka’s attention.

That hand finds the lip of his waistband, catching his underwear too, pausing again until Zuko nods, and tugs down, down, down, until there’s nothing covering him but the cool night air. Once they’re past his feet, they disappear over the side of the bed. They could vanish forever, for all Zuko cares right now.

Sokka sits back on his heels to admire him, letting out a low whistle through his teeth. Then he holds Zuko’s hips down as he presses his mouth to the taut skin over the bone on one side, hot and wet and maddening, and Zuko wants to scream, but all he can manage is a half-choked gasp of Sokka’s name. When Sokka’s eyes flick up to meet his, the sharp blue Zuko adores is just a slender ring around the blown-out black of his pupils, and Zuko’s cock twitches against his abdomen.

This moment of eye contact, heady and overwhelming, is another question, another chance for Zuko to say stop.

He doesn’t.

He nods again, and he drags his fingers through Sokka’s hair, and then Sokka takes him in his mouth and his mind goes endlessly, blissfully blank.

Sokka’s mouth is perfect, and he knew that already, but this is _different._ His tongue swirls around the head, and he hums when Zuko’s hand in his hair tightens, not pulling, just enough pressure to encourage him, and it works. Sokka takes him down as far as he can, a hand working where he can’t, and takes Zuko’s breath away _._

The wet-slick sound of it is obscene, and the view is even more so - Sokka’s lips spit-shiny around him, eyes rolling back into his head as he palms himself through his trousers. Zuko thinks this every time he sees Sokka, but he can’t help wondering if anyone in the world has ever looked as beautiful as this.

Zuko sucks in a deep breath, the only one he can, and gasps again, _“Sokka.”_

Sokka pulls off with a _pop_ , licks a slow stripe along the shaft, and presses a kiss to the tip. He trails open-mouthed kisses all the way down to the root, every single one of them a lightning strike, and there’s that tension in Zuko’s gut again, coiling tighter and tighter and tighter.

Zuko uses his grip on Sokka’s hair to pull him back up to him. Sokka keeps a hand on him, his loose grip becoming more firm when Zuko crashes their lips together. Sokka sighs into his mouth, and he can taste himself on Sokka’s tongue, a barely-there tang that sends a fresh spike of arousal through his blood.

Sokka drops onto his side without breaking the kiss, and Zuko curls into him, pressing as close as he can, hands scrambling for any part of him they can get. He brushes over a nipple and wins a sharp intake of breath for it, and a dull scratch of nails through the hair that leads south from Sokka’s navel gets him a pained groan of _“Zuko,”_ buried in the crook of his neck.

He skims the top of Sokka’s trousers, shocked and appalled that he’s still wearing them, and feels the muscle there jolt under his touch. 

Sokka says, “Here, let me just -” at the same time as Zuko asks, “Can I -?”

Their hands get in the way of each other in the struggle to finally rid Sokka of all of his clothes, and he gets stuck more than once trying to get them off his feet. 

“I kind of get the appeal of skirts now,” Sokka mutters, and Zuko laughs. 

He feels light and carefree like never before, and peppers kisses across Sokka’s cheeks to let him know he’s the reason.

Sokka finally frees himself from the tangle of fabric, and doesn’t even give Zuko a second to admire the view before he’s pouncing on him again, smiling lips locked and hands everywhere.

The first time they slide together comes as a shock. Zuko gasps at the new friction, vision blurring at the edges, and Sokka’s moan is short-lived and surprised. 

But the second time, and every time after that, is on purpose. It’s a deliberate roll of hips, a white-knuckle grasp of sheets, a hand wrapped around them both to keep the angle just right. They rock together, their pace easy and steady until it’s not, until it’s erratic and faltering and building, building, building -

Zuko’s vision whites out, and his cry is muffled by Sokka’s mouth on his, and he feels _everything._

Every moment of lingering eye contact, every too-long brush of a hand on a shoulder, every bruising kiss stolen around the corner from prying eyes - all that pent-up tension, all the promises of _later_ and _something more,_ spilling out onto the fingers of Sokka’s hand between them.

He’s still in the freefall when Sokka follows him. The only sound past his lips is a sigh of _“Zuko,”_ over and over like a mantra.

Sokka rolls onto his back, and when Zuko looks at him, skin splattered with white and grinning at the ceiling, he realises he was wrong before. _This_ is the most beautiful anyone has ever looked.

Sokka looks at him then, and says, still breathing heavily, “Hey, Zuko?”

It’s not the prayer it was a moment ago, but it’s still more than just a name, still wholly different to the way anyone else says it.

Zuko says, “Yeah?”

And Sokka says, “Happy birthday.”

Zuko’s laugh erupts from deep in his chest, and it comes out louder than he expects. He shifts onto his side and cradles Sokka’s face with one hand as he kisses him, one sweet brush of lips, and then another, and another, until Sokka props himself up on an elbow to deepen it, and Zuko cringes away from the contact with the mess left on their bodies.

He reaches blindly over the side of the bed for something to wipe off with.

“Oh, hey, that’s _mine_ ,” Sokka whines.

Zuko rolls his eyes. “If you stop complaining, you can be the little spoon.”

“But it’s _your_ birthday.”

“And this is _your_ underwear,” Zuko says. 

Sokka hums, thinking, and then groans into Zuko’s shoulder. “I have to go to my room and get pyjamas.”

“So?”

“So,” Sokka says, “what if I run into someone in the hall, and they ask me why I look so -”

“Debauched?”

“I was gonna say _fucked_ but that works too, I guess.” He drags himself off the bed and roots through the various items of discarded clothing until he finds his trousers and pulls them on. He doesn’t bother putting on anything else.

Zuko tosses Sokka’s underwear-turned-washcloth to the corner to be dealt with in the morning.

“You could say you got in a fight,” he offers. “Oh, wait, you could tell them they’re dreaming.”

Sokka laughs. “Who’d have this dream?”

“Sokka, _I’ve_ had this dream.”

“You don’t count.” When Zuko frowns at him, he amends, “I’m not going to run half-dressed into _you_ in the hallway.”

Zuko sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He’s not sure if he trusts them to carry him if he stands.

Sokka stands idle in the middle of the room, frowning slightly, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do.

“Just go,” Zuko says. “Then you can come back.”

Sokka crosses the room and stands between his legs. He cards his fingers through Zuko’s hair, smoothing it back out of his face. Zuko doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look so _fond_ in his life.

“This is the wrong way, Sokka.”

“I know,” Sokka says, and kisses him. It’s sweet and chaste and lingering, and it comes in the shape of Sokka’s smile. He pulls away again and shrugs, nonchalant in his charm, “One for the road.”

Zuko loves him. He rolls his eyes, and says, “You’re a loser.”

Sokka laughs, and the sound of it still echoes through the room when he slips quietly out the door. Zuko will never get tired of hearing it.

His legs don’t buckle under him in the end, but it’s a close thing. He thinks maybe he should feel self-conscious standing naked and after-glowing in the bedroom of a stranger, but all he feels as he digs through his bag for pyjamas is bone-deep satisfaction. The itch under his skin is gone, balmed by Sokka’s hands - he knows it’ll probably be back by morning, but right now, he feels better than he has in weeks.

He’s sliding into bed when Sokka returns, changed and wearing a strange look on his face. The door closes behind him with a gentle _click._

“How long have Ty Lee and Suki been a thing?” he asks, voice hushed, as he crosses the room to the bed.

“A year?” Zuko guesses. “Maybe more? Why?”

“Their room is right next to mine,” Sokka says. He crawls in under the covers and tucks himself against Zuko’s side. “They’re _loud._ And honeymoon-phase-y.”

Zuko scoffs. “What do you call this, then?”

Sokka presses a wet kiss to his neck. “Nice. Good. You’re very warm.”

The last part sounds like it wasn’t meant to be said out loud, but Zuko appreciates it all the same. He wraps an arm around Sokka’s waist and draws him nearer. Sokka yawns, burrowing further into Zuko’s embrace, and Zuko thinks he could spend the rest of his life like this.

Sokka murmurs, “Goodnight, Zuko,” into the crook of his neck, and Zuko loves him.

Zuko says, “Goodnight, Sokka,” and falls asleep with his lips pressed to Sokka’s temple.

* * *

Zuko wakes with the sun, and Sokka is holding onto him like Zuko’s arm around him is a blanket, or maybe a shield. 

Sokka stirs when Zuko shifts, trying to bring the feeling back to the other arm he's using as a pillow. He grumbles something about “Back t’leep, ‘uko,” and Zuko takes his advice.

* * *

When he wakes again, who knows how many hours later, Sokka is watching him, which is an impressive feat, given the fact that they’re plastered as close together as humanly possible. 

Zuko blinks, and Sokka is still watching him when he opens his eyes again, but now there’s a smile spreading across his face, slow and sweet like syrup. Zuko doesn’t say a word, just tilts Sokka’s chin up with a fingertip and kisses him soundly.

“Good morning to you, too,” Sokka says. His voice is closer to a croak than anything else.

They trade lazy kisses and soft touches until they’re not so lazy and soft anymore, until Sokka slips his thigh between Zuko’s, until Zuko sits up against the headboard and Sokka slides into his lap, until -

There’s an ear-splitting knock on the door, and Suki’s voice calls from the other side, “Rise and shine, Firelord!”

A moment later, there’s a knock on another door and a similar call to action for Sokka.

Sokka slumps forward, resting his forehead against Zuko’s. “Raincheck?”

Zuko kisses him again instead of answering, and he thinks this is something he could do for the rest of his life, too.

* * *

Zuko feels Ty Lee eyeing him at breakfast, and then again when he’s helping Suki clean up in the garden, and _again_ on the walk down to the docks. At first he thinks maybe there's something wrong, like maybe he's got food in his teeth, but she has this look on her face the whole time like she's trying to figure him out, trying to put something together.

She doesn’t say anything until they reach the ship, when she pulls him into a tight hug to say goodbye.

"Thank you for the party," he says, and she squeezes him one last time before letting him go.

"I guess you really had fun last night, huh," she says. Her voice isn't suggestive or taunting in any way, but Zuko still feels the chill of _she knows_ down his back.

"What, uh - what makes you say that?"

He glances over at Sokka, laughing with Suki and one of the other Warriors. Sokka meets his eye and grins, and warmth swells in his chest like a balloon. Suddenly, he doesn’t care if Ty Lee knows. He doesn’t care if _everyone_ knows. 

"Well, yesterday your aura was pink," Ty Lee explains, "which is always a good sign, but now - now you’re all shiny. I’ve never seen anything like it. You're _golden_ , Zuko."

Zuko’s eyes snap back to her. “I - huh. That sounds, um -”

“It’s kind of beautiful, actually,” she says, and then her face floods with colour. “I can’t believe I just said the Firelord’s aura is pretty.”

Zuko laughs. “It’s okay, I won’t tell him.”

She grins at him, and then movement somewhere to his side catches his eye. It’s Sokka, because who else could hold his attention without even trying, extracting himself from Suki’s arms and making his way over.

He drops a hand onto Zuko’s shoulder and smiles at him like the sun and all its stars, and asks, “You ready to go, Hotman?”

Zuko rolls his eyes, but as he waves a final farewell to Ty Lee he thinks, _golden sounds about right._

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://goldrushzukka.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/carlyraejervis?s=09/)


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